Best Way to Make a Local Backup of iCloud Drive?

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Best Way to Make a Local Backup of iCloud Drive?

I guess this is more a question of opinion, rather than a search for ideas, as from my research I don't think there are alternatives that are useful for me.

What is the best way to keep an up-to-date, local copy of all of my iCloud Drive files?

I have a MacBook Pro with 512GB of storage, but bootcamp takes up 100GB and the remaining is a couple hundred GB too shy to fit everything. I have chosen to keep my Photos library downloaded, and my files (iCloud Drive) on optimized storage. I often make TimeMachine backups of my computer, but I noticed that it doesn't include files that are only stored in the cloud. So, I essentially don't have a single local copy of hundreds of important files, in case I don't have access to the internet (often) or god forbid something awful happens, (or my data gets corrupted -- that happens occasionally too).

I was considering two options:

1) partition part of a 2TB secondary backup drive I have and install MacOS. It would be very slow, but I would just leave it and let it fill up with all the contents of my iCloud Drive, and after the first time I can just let it do its thing.

2) Manually grab bite-sized folders (i.e. ones that aren't in the hundreds of GB) and copy each one to the drive. Then each time I need to update, try to figure out what needs replacement and hope I don't need to download/transfer/make room for 300GB of files.

3) Any other ideas?

Thanks!

Hope this is helpful to other people looking for the same answers........

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Jul 10, 2020 6:54 PM

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Answer 1

Jul 11, 2020 12:32 PM in response to HarrisonMG

I had wondered if that's what you meant. I think that so long as you have more files in the cloud than you can fit on your Mac you will find it somewhat difficult to find a simple solution. As you may well know you can't keep iCloud files on an external drive (unless it's the system disk). I guess I'm fortunate in that I use a desktop and the internal drive is 2TB. If I needed to use a notebook, I might think about keeping something like an older mac mini with a large enough internal drive to take full version files and an external drive for Time machine. I appreciate this might be an expensive solution, but you do get a permanent ongoing backup system without ever having to think about it.

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Answer 2

HarrisonMG Author

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86 points

Jul 11, 2020 11:07 AM in response to Winston Churchill

What I mean is, since my mac has "Optimize Storage" enabled, many of my files are offloaded to iCloud -- there isn't a local copy on my device. For a while, I had assumed that during a Time Machine backup, the computer would temporarily download any modified or new files to include in the backup, but this has failed to be true. In my backups, there are likely hundreds of empty folders because the files are in the cloud, not stored locally.

So I think it is generally a bad idea to have important files stored nowhere but the cloud -- I should have at least one local copy. The question is, when my documents take up 300ish GB, and 250 of those GB are only in the cloud, how do I best manage a system to consistently keep updated backups of all the files (I don't need old backups, just the current ones).

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Answer 3

Jul 11, 2020 9:39 AM in response to HarrisonMG

but I noticed that it doesn't include files that are only stored in the cloud

I'm not sure what you mean by this statement, how do you have files that are only stored in the cloud.

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Best Way to Make a Local Backup of iCloud Drive?

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