Currently, my MacBook Pro is regularly backed up to both an external hard drive via Time Capsule and iCloud, including a lot of videos in Photo. I understand that if I delete files from Photo on my MBP they will also disappear from iCloud (correct?). But now that I'm synched with iCloud will they also disappear from *past* Time Capsule back-ups on the external hard drive when I do the next back-up to it, or are those always kept? Thanks.
MacBook Pro
Are you asking about backups using Time Machine?
If you delete a photo from your Mac.......at some point in the future......you cannot know exactly when......Time Machine will also delete the photo from the backups. In theory, this will occur when Time Machine needs to make more room for new backups when the space on the backup drive starts to fill up.
So, if you have plenty of free space on the Time Capsule, chances are the deleted photo will stay on the older backups for some time. But, to be safe, it would wise to remember that Time Machine backs up the changes that have occurred on your Mac, so if you delete a file from your Mac, that file will also be deleted from the Time Machine backups.
Another way to say the same thing would be to mention that if you delete a file on your Mac and a copy of that file remains on your Time Machine backups, then you don't really have a backup at all. The term backup assumes that you have two copies of the same file....an "original" and a "second" copy. If you delete the "original" on your Mac, then the "second" copy becomes your "original"......and you have no backup for that file in case the backup drive has a problem.
That's sort of scary. Thanks for the warning. That's one reason why I always back up onto two different drives. But I guess I should also get a Cloud back-up too? Is there one that is known to be better than the others? I'm mainly concerned with video and photos. Thanks.
I don't use iCloud or any other type of backup like this.....because I'm not thrilled about storing my personal data on a hard drive owned by someone else.....so cannot comment on the merits or downsides of using iCloud or a cloud service.
As far as deleting a file from my Macs, I don't do this unless I'm pretty sure that I will never need that file in the future.
iCloud vs. Time Capsule
