Using iCloud as a back up location

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Level 1

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Using iCloud as a back up location

I have a back up folder of photos on One Drive, the photos are already in my Icloud photos account so can me viewed from my iPad, Mac etc, this folder is purely a secondary back up file.

I want to close my One Drive account and make use of the additional storage space on my iCloud subscription. When I copied the back up folder from One Drive to iCloud, it also copied the files to my Mac SSD. When I tried to optimise the storage it seems the default position is to assume that I want to include all these pictures in iPhoto, which if I did, would import them into IPhoto again and therefore duplicate all of them (approximately 20K pictures).

I can't see an obvious way of telling iCloud not to sync a specific folder, i.e keep it in iCloud without downloading the entire folder to my MAC. Am I missing something obvious? I do have copies of the photo backup up on a external hard drive but want a cloud based back up too.

Can I use iCloud like I can with my One Drive account or is that asking too much?

Mac Pro

Posted on May 14, 2021 4:23 AM

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Answer 1

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LACAllen

Level 8

43,500 points

May 14, 2021 7:53 AM in response to RichM71

Can I use iCloud like I can with my One Drive account or is that asking too much?

Not really an answerable question is it?

You want Onedrive and iCloud to have the same featureset and they don't.

Feedback for Apple goes here >>> http://www.apple.com/feedback/.

iCloud Drive is a syncing service, designed to keep the iCloud drive folder on your Mac in sync with iCloud itself. There are optimization options but they do not provide a very precise level on control s to what gets offloaded from your Mac.

see >>> https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206996

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Answer 2

PRP_53

Level 10

91,807 points

May 14, 2021 7:58 AM in response to RichM71

iCloud was designed and intended as a Conduit / Method to allow the user to access files from various Apple Devices and Sync the files back and forth from One Device to All Devices.

It is not intended as an Addition Storage Place like an external Drive. When iCloud is Enabled, although items are on the Cloud, a Copy of that same files will reside on the Internal Drive of whatever devices is being used.

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Using iCloud as a back up location

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