For the love of God, would someone please give me a straight answer on this regarding iCloud DRIVE!?

Your question about the difference between iCloud and iCloud Drive is hard to answer.

iCloud Drive is a part of iCloud. It is one of the many iCloud services. iCloud Drive is a service to keep your documents and data on your devices in sync. if you do not expect it to be something like DropBox, it is easy to understand. You may want to read Gail from Maine's excellent user tip: https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-12002

If, after having uploaded every picture of my life for the past 5-8 years to iCloud DRIVE, I then DELETE ALL of those picture FROM MY iMAC....

How are you uploading your pictures to iCloud Drive? Are you storing them as image files on iCloud Drive or are you importing them to iCloud Photos (Library)? "delete all from my iMac" is ambiguous. You can delete from any folder outside the visible iCloud Drive, but not from the iCloud Drive folder you are seeing on your Mac.

• How to use iCloud Drive: if you enable iCloud Drive you can see it as a drive in the Finder sidebar. It will look like an external drive. You can move or copy files and folders to this drive in the sidebar. They will upload to iCloud Drive, sync to your other synced devices, and a shadow copy of the iCloud item will be saved on your Mac, so you can work with this item, while you are offline. If you delete the item from iCloud Drive, it will be removed from iCloud and all synced devices. At this point you are having a powerful syncing service, but no way to save storage. To save storage, enable "Optimize Mac Storage". This way some of the shadow copies will be removed from your Mac and you will only say the name of the file on iCloud Drive with a cloud symbol. You will need an internet connection to access the file. The optimization is automatic and you cannot control it. Even with "Optimize Mac Storage" you must not delete any item from iCloud Drive you moved there, unless you want to delete it everywhere. Deleting photos you are storing outside the visible iCloud Drive will not matter, but do not delete from iCloud Drive.
• How to use iCloud Photos: iCloud Photos is working similar to iCloud Drive. It is primarily a syncing service to keep the Photos Library identical on all your devices. The Library in iCloud is the master copy. It will be updated, whenever you change a local Photos Library on one of your devices, and the changes will sync from iCloud to all other devices. Without "Optimize Storage" for you Photos Library, you will need the same amount of storage locally on your devices as in iCloud. If you enable "Optimize Storage" on one of the devices, local copies may be removed auto magically to free storage. For Cloud Photos Library des the same as for iCloud Drive. never delete a photo from your synced Photos Library that you want to keep. It will be deleted everywhere. You have to trust the "Optimize" algorithm to free storage as need be. You cannot control it fully. For selected albums you can give Photos a hint, that you want to keep these albums stored locally.

Which of the two services have you been using? For photos using iCloud Photos would be the better option.

Whatever you do - do not start deleting anything, before you made full backup copy on an external drive of all data you are storing in iCloud.

Hi.

I think the other contributors explain iCloud very well but I might just add a few comments.

I think of iCloud more as a means of attaining peace of mind about my data and photos but mostly my photos.

iCloud Drive - I would use this for documents only.

iCloud Photos - I would use this for Photos and camera movies only.

If you pay for 2 TB of iCloud storage this is available to you across the whole iCloud service offering which would be: email, iCloud Drive, iCloud Photos.

iCloud Drive

iCloud Drive is just like Google Drive and OneDrive in that the master data is stored in the cloud.

So when you add a file to your iCloud Drive your file is stored locally on your Mac but it is then immediately copied to the master data set in the cloud as part of your storage plan.

If you are logged into your iCloud account on your phone, or on another computer that data can also be copied and available there too.

The cloud master data is a "live" copy of your data so if you remove a file on your local copy it will also be removed in the cloud. (The cloud data is also backed up by Apple with plenty of redundancy).

This is good so long as you do not consider iCloud storage as a conventional Backup that allows you to go back in time like Time Machine.

iCloud Desktop and Documents was introduced as a default in High Sierra which can catch some people out and be rather confusing in my opinion. Suddenly seeing your desktop and My Documents in a different place is strange, but it does make sense. If this is turned on then the side bar in finder will have an iCloud heading showing iCloud Drive, Documents, Desktop.

The default setting is that your user account "My Documents" Folder and your Computer Desktop become incorporated into iCloud. They all work in the same way.

iCloud Photos

For me this is provides the best data assurance.

Prior to using iCloud Photos I was managing my whole photo collection locally only using a mixture of time Machine and external hard disks as a means of backup. I have scanned a large amount of old photos and added these to my photo Library which is currently standing at 40K images.

It is fine to manage your photos locally in this way but there are some reasons why I do not believe it the best way.

1. Fire or disaster. If you keep your photos backup up in Time Machine and external drives you are not protected in the event of your home burning down or natural disaster. The traditional way around this is to keep multiple copies of your data at another place, for example with a friend or relative. This approach is fine if you are business but in a domestic setting, human nature dictates that we often forget to keep the offsite backup updated.
2. Hard disk failure. Mechanical drives will fail eventually. I've had a WD disk Book sitting my desk for 8 years now. Still going strong but how much longer will it last I wonder. It is down to luck as to how much you can retrieve when it fails. For this reason it is good to keep more than one copy just in case. Prior to using iCloud Photos I once dropped a hard drive whilst disconnecting a cable from 6 inches onto carpet - lost everything on it.
3. Theft - If your computer is stolen then having a good backup will save you. But will your backup be up to date?
4. Cost - It costs money to buy 2 external drives and a separate drive for Time Machine. Additional cost when you need to replace a failed drive.
5. Time - It takes time to manage your backup regime.

In the old days, boxes of photos and albums and slides were kept in the loft or in drawers with no protection against fire etc. iCloud photos changed that so when it came along I jumped at it because it brings protection from the 5 points above.

At the risk of sounding sentimental I have all my childhood photos and my kids' childhood photos stored in iCloud Photos.

I see this as something my kids/family will inherit one day and I believe this is the best way to ensure they can.

Optimise Storage?

This feature is very very good and I do use it.

Advantages

• keeps the local device storage use dramatically low. For example you can see all your photos on your iPhone.
• You can view your whole photo collection in low res and download hi res version when required.
• You can optimise storage on your iPhone but not use it on your iMac for example. (see below)

Disadvantage.

• having local low resolution photos means that if you are using time Machine to do an extra backup, it will backup those low resolution photos and not the hi resolution ones. In this scenario it might be best to turn off Optimise Storage on the computer that is running Time Machine.

We can also have the discussion about the security of keeping your personal photos in a cloud service but I think that it is another topic.

Anyway I hope that helps you a bit...

I have used my Mac to

Hello,

iCloud drive is a folder on the internal hard drive of your mac and it uses space on your internal drive.

In icloud drive, you put folders, documents,.... that you want to synchronise with icloud. (you don’t save space on your internal drive but you have always access to this folders, documents, ... where-ever you are)

If you want to access iCloud, surf to icloud.com and log in with your Apple ID.

You don’t buy iCloud drive storage, you buy iCloud storage

My advice as far as your photolibrary is concerned:

• move your photolibrary to an external drive
• use another external drive to make backups with timemachine (backups that include your mac and the external drive with your photolibrary)
• if you want to have access to your photolibrary on other devices (imac, macbook, iphone, ipad, appleTv,...) upload your photolibrary to iCloud

I hope this makes it more clear to you,

have a nice day

Yes.

Just log into iCloud.com

But bear in mind that it is exactly the same with DropBox.

There is a web version of Dropbox that you can use but there is also a local copy on your hard drive that synchs to the data in DropBox in the cloud. Exactly the same as iCloud Drive.

Even if the process required transferring all 840GB to an iCloud Drive ON MY COMPUTER, that wouldn’t/shouldn’t consume ANY more space on my computer’s hard drive...but that is exactly what is happening as we speak.

Which version of MacOS X are you currently using? is the file system APFS?

When you move files to iCloud Drive, they will be erased from your hard drive and then downloaded again as shadow copies in the user library. The files will no longer be the same, identical files. This can break hard links to similar copies, for example files in iPhoto Libraries or Aperture libraries. as a consequence, duplicates will now need twice the storage than before. Time Machine may not recognize the versions on iCloud Drive as files it backed up before, and the local snapshots will need more storage than before.

What is the purpose of creating a folder ( having previous pictures inside it ) in the location Finder > Macintosh HD > users > your user name > pictures , it will unnecessary occupy hard disk space , if you delete the folder yes it will be deleted and you precious photos will be lost , of course that will not effect iCloud Drive and the photos inside the iCloud won't be deleted .

I never saved photos in iCloud Drive the reason why to waste the space that can be used for different purpose like saving files , documents etc .

So when ever you plan to connect Mac to an external hard drive , drag and drop that folder called " 2017 " with your photos over external drive and save them .

Note : you can decide how to increase the iCloud storage space , either optimise storage feature , delete unwanted pictures , upgrading storage etc ...

Note : In iCloud server many other applications apart from photos are stored , like notes , calendar ...etc if they are occupying some space delete the unwanted .

I think you are copying the folder with your pictures to your iCloud drive on your mac. This means that the folder is stored twice and this takes space

In finder > under iCloud Drive if you select the photos and right click on them and move to trash , they will be in the trash folder unless you empty the trash , in case if you have set up iCloud photo library https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT204264

All the photos are saved in photo library folder .

There is no point of saving photos in iCloud Drive use it for your personal documents , files and utilise the storage or save the space .

If you have crossed the free 5GB iCloud photo storage limit , either use optimise storage feature see this article https://support.apple.com/en-in/ghttps://support.apple.com/en-in/HT201517

And manage your iCloud storage space see this https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT201318

or buy storage from apple see this article https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT201318

As per your requirements , also you can move photos to an external hard drive https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT201517