Q: videos and photos into iCloud drive?
I would like to use iCloud like an external hard drive.
I want to keep my photos and videos in iCloud and delete them from my phone.
I understand that if I delete photos and videos from my iphone that the photos and videos will delete also from iCloud.
I now have a 1T storage plan because I can't afford to lose any photos or videos and now my MacBook Pro is also full.
Another thing is that my iphone cannot back up to the iCloud - this is from April 2015 and it has never worked since.
Any advice is much appreciated.
Cheers
Darren
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.4), 15" i7
Posted on Aug 4, 2016 10:41 PM
iCloud Photo Library is an "all or nothing" affair (BTW, that means you don't have to use it at all). Whatever photos you add/take on any devices or computers linked to that iCPL account, will be uploaded to the cloud.
The storage message you received is about running low on your Mac, not on iCloud. Yes, you can also keep an Optimized library on your computer, but as I explained, that leaves you without a backup of your full-resolution photos and videos. It's a dangerous gamble to take to rely solely on cloud storage.
Hard drives do fail, but external drives are no different in that respect than internal drives. Because they fail, keeping current backups is essential. Not sure why you had such bad luck with them, but that should not be a reason not to have backups at all of your Photos Library, which is what you're proposing. If it's their age, buy a new one.
Posted on Aug 5, 2016 7:44 AM