Hi- I have tons of old files backed up via Backblaze, others in Dropbox and other places. While they're all accessible I'm trying to consolidate everything into 1 place, iCloud Drive being the likely destination. Any suggestions on how to go about doing this?
Thanks!
Best advice: don't. iCloud is not a backup service, it is a syncing service, designed to make your data immediately accessible on all your devices. If for example, you create a document on your Mac, it will be synced to iCloud and then accessible on your iPhone. If you delete it from your iPhone it will be deleted from iCloud and from your Mac.
Google Drive is a useful alternative: like Dropbox it places a folder on your Mac and anything in there is synced to the Drive: but you can also have folders on the Drive which are not synced to your Mac, and can be accessed via their web page or a third-party app such as Cyberduck. It provides 15Gb of free storage, with upgrades ranging from 100GB ($1.99 per month) to 30TB ($299.99 per month) (see their pricing page - scroll to the bottom). They have added an additional step to 200GB ($2.99 per month) but removed the 1TB level, the next being 2TB ($9.99 per month).
You can do much the same thing with Dropbox. It is free for storage up to 2GB - you can increase this by recommending friends - but there is then a steep step up to 1TB at $10 per month, which is a good price, though as 1TB is rather a lot it's a pity that they don't provide an intermediate level.
Both the Dropbox and Google Drive syncing applications require OSX 10.10 Yosemite.
However I would strongly recommend you to look into Amazon S3 which provides storage and sharing, though not syncing. Its pricing is progressive, depending entirely on how much you store (rather than the large steps up used by most other services), with an additional charge for uploads; costs vary by the regions chosen for storage - typical charges are $0.026 per GB, $0.0055 per 1,000 uploads, with storage rates reducing above 50TB - it's aimed at businesses but it quite suitable for personal use. You can have free access up to 5GB for a year (paying the costs if you go over). You can choose from a number of storage areas in USA, Europe or Asia so you would choose the nearest to get the best speeds. It's cheaper than, for example, Google up to very approximately 400GB but above that, as the price increases proportionally, it becomes more expensive up to 1TB, then, with Google's step to 10TB, becomes cheaper up to about 3TB and more expensive up to 10TB. (10 TB is unlikely to be reached by private users! - Google's maximum is 30TB, Amazon is unlimited.)
There is also 'Glacier' storage which is very much cheaper but where files cannot be retrieved immediately - it may take several hours, so it's suitable for long-term storage (this isn't available on the free version).
Its operation isn't as simple as some others so it's worth reading the documentation carefully. Uploading/downloading can be done using the web-page console, but it's easier to use a third-party program - Cyberduck handles it very well. It is designed to be reliable to professional standards and has multiple redundancy in its storage. Though requiring a little more effort to master than the others it's a very good and reliable storage solution.
Best advice: don't. iCloud is not a backup service, it is a syncing service, designed to make your data immediately accessible on all your devices. If for example, you create a document on your Mac, it will be synced to iCloud and then accessible on your iPhone. If you delete it from your iPhone it will be deleted from iCloud and from your Mac.
Google Drive is a useful alternative: like Dropbox it places a folder on your Mac and anything in there is synced to the Drive: but you can also have folders on the Drive which are not synced to your Mac, and can be accessed via their web page or a third-party app such as Cyberduck. It provides 15Gb of free storage, with upgrades ranging from 100GB ($1.99 per month) to 30TB ($299.99 per month) (see their pricing page - scroll to the bottom). They have added an additional step to 200GB ($2.99 per month) but removed the 1TB level, the next being 2TB ($9.99 per month).
You can do much the same thing with Dropbox. It is free for storage up to 2GB - you can increase this by recommending friends - but there is then a steep step up to 1TB at $10 per month, which is a good price, though as 1TB is rather a lot it's a pity that they don't provide an intermediate level.
Both the Dropbox and Google Drive syncing applications require OSX 10.10 Yosemite.
However I would strongly recommend you to look into Amazon S3 which provides storage and sharing, though not syncing. Its pricing is progressive, depending entirely on how much you store (rather than the large steps up used by most other services), with an additional charge for uploads; costs vary by the regions chosen for storage - typical charges are $0.026 per GB, $0.0055 per 1,000 uploads, with storage rates reducing above 50TB - it's aimed at businesses but it quite suitable for personal use. You can have free access up to 5GB for a year (paying the costs if you go over). You can choose from a number of storage areas in USA, Europe or Asia so you would choose the nearest to get the best speeds. It's cheaper than, for example, Google up to very approximately 400GB but above that, as the price increases proportionally, it becomes more expensive up to 1TB, then, with Google's step to 10TB, becomes cheaper up to about 3TB and more expensive up to 10TB. (10 TB is unlikely to be reached by private users! - Google's maximum is 30TB, Amazon is unlimited.)
There is also 'Glacier' storage which is very much cheaper but where files cannot be retrieved immediately - it may take several hours, so it's suitable for long-term storage (this isn't available on the free version).
Its operation isn't as simple as some others so it's worth reading the documentation carefully. Uploading/downloading can be done using the web-page console, but it's easier to use a third-party program - Cyberduck handles it very well. It is designed to be reliable to professional standards and has multiple redundancy in its storage. Though requiring a little more effort to master than the others it's a very good and reliable storage solution.
Backblaze, Dropbox, etc. -> iCloud
