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iCloud to External Hard Drive

I have about 700+ GB of storage taken up in my iCloud drive. Most of which being, videos, photos on from my iPhone and some movies / documents I've left in my computer in which, eventually uploaded to my iCloud.


Now,


the way I have my iCloud set up on my computer is to my desktop. Basically anything I drop on the desktop is subject to get automatically uploaded to the iCloud drive. [being that my computer only has about 30 GB of free space - un-purgeable space, this space is taken up by essential apps I need on my computer]


Which lead me to my first resolution which is to download each file, bit by bit then drag from my internal hard drive, then drag and drop into to the external, then purge then, rinse to repeat. Not only would this be tedious but it's likely this process would take me weeks... [being how slow iCloud reacts to uploading and downloading - must be internet speed but who knows really, just takes an exhaustive amount time]


So I thought,

is there a way to skip this attentive, time consuming process and have everything download directly to the external drive instead? [like google drive simply does from its browser]


I think this is a big problem if there isn't an alternative.

Being that most of their products don't offer as much space within a reasonable, price range out of box. I haven't found any resources online that have directed me into a clearer alternative to this and... Apple support didn't tell me what to do, it seemed as if I created the solution for them as I was on the phone, explaining my problem then telling them my own solution to their problem.



Thank you ahead of time for all of your responses, I do hope that apple makes things easier for us to organize ourselves, our work, our lives has they always have made their efforts to.

MacBook Pro 13", macOS 10.15

Posted on Jan 25, 2020 3:18 PM

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Posted on Jan 25, 2020 7:29 PM

Not quite as easy as you want, but you can archive your iCloud data to your computer, then drag the archive folder to the external, and then delete the folder from the internal hard drive.


Archive or make copies of your iCloud data

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5 replies

Jan 26, 2020 2:02 AM in response to alainconpan

Good thinking, and see what Eric says above. You should be able to download some things in somewhat mass quantities. But, I'd do this task piecemeal for safety. Once you get everything to safe locations you may want to downgrade your iCloud storage. I said "safe locations" because I would want to back everything up to two locations, say an external drive and and an alternate cloud storage location. I use Dropbox Plus priced essential the same as iCloud. Here is the link for downgrading your iCloud storage: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207594

Jan 30, 2020 11:23 AM in response to alainconpan

Everyone thank you for your input. I appreciate the time taken out towards an effort to figure out this problem.


I've connected my computer to an ethernet cable, to the router of my home to make this downloading process faster, it's been helping out.

So far, I have solved this problem... Although I wouldn't say this is the best solution.


iCloud needs to download into your computer before exporting into and external hard drive. Makes no sense to me. I guess the advantages of everything on my mac to my iPhone.


Moving forward, I'm going to take off iCloud from my desktop and give it a specific folder on my mac, this way, these things don't happen again.

iCloud to External Hard Drive

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