How can I upload 1TB from my iPad to my iCloud Drive?

Question

How can I upload 1TB from my iPad to my iCloud Drive?

I have a 256GB iPad and 2TB of iCloud storage. I'll be generating around 20GB per day that I want to push into the cloud via WiFi while travelling. I can successfully copy from an SD card connected to my iPad into my iCloud Drive using the Files app on the iPad, taking up 20GB on both the iPad and in the cloud.

What's going to happen after around 10 days when my iPad's local storage becomes full? I would hope the iPad would be smart enough to delete its local copy of the oldest content to make space and the iCloud copy would remain. Does anyone know for sure? Is there any detailed documentation from Apple that describes the behaviour of iCloud?

Apple provides no mechanism to manually delete a local copy of iCloud content that doesn't also delete the cloud copy. Deleting content on the iPad moves it to the local trash (which continues to occupy space) and manually deleting it from the trash permanently removes it from iCloud Drive's "Recently Deleted" folder.

I really don't want to have to upload over 200GB just as an experiment but I also don't want to find out my plan won't work once I'm travelling overseas.

iPad Pro 11-inch Wi-Fi

Posted on Jul 30, 2022 8:56 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

muguy

Level 10

82,519 points

Jul 31, 2022 5:09 AM in response to Slartibartfast58

Anything in the cloud is also on your device. iCloud is primarily a synchronization service, not offline storage. You can optimize photos (settings - photos) which will keep lower resolution files on your device and originals in the cloud.

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Answer 2

Jul 31, 2022 7:22 PM in response to muguy

No, it's easy to upload files into iCloud using the web interface and then delete the originals. These files then occupy space only in the cloud and not on the local storage of any device. They show up in Files app with a cloud symbol are are only downloaded if you open them.

This web-based approach works using Safari on the iPad but isn't very practical for large numbers of data. Firstly, there's something like a 10GB limit per session and, secondly, Safari has to be active throughout the upload and any glitch, e.g., from a network interruption, means that files not fully uploaded are forgotten. In contrast, the Files app seems to keep uploading in the background, even when the iPad is locked, and will automatically continue uploads across network outages and device restarts.

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How can I upload 1TB from my iPad to my iCloud Drive?

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