iCloud on Windows (under Boot Camp) appears to be "thrashing"

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iCloud on Windows (under Boot Camp) appears to be "thrashing"

I am basically an Apple user, but there are times when I might want to work on one of my files using a Windows app, so I gave over part of one of my computers to a Boot Camp partition with Windows 10. My files are on iCloud. So it's great that Apple/Microsoft have an iCloud app isn't it?

Well it would be if it worked. I downloaded and installed it OK, but then nothing happened. The document file just showed as 'folder empty'. Two calls to Apple and 48 hours later, I learned that if you click the iCloud icon on the toolbar a little pop-up appears, which said it was 'initialising' and showed an increasing count of 'items' being initialised. It doesn't say what an item is, how many there are or how long it is going to take to initialise the rest. According to MacOS, my iCloud has 11,000 items; but this Microsoft counter went up to over 200,000 - then went to zero and did it again.

After about 4 days I found a few folders had finally appeared in my iCloud drive. They were all empty but that's a start isn't it? I observed that the little popup on the toolbar no longer says 'initialising items' but 'uploading' or 'downloading' a number of items (typically 30-100). Why it should be uploading any is a mystery, because I haven't added anything to the iCloud yet! Anyway, it has up- and downloaded thousands of 'items' over the last couple of days without making much diference to the content of the iCloud folders. It has now been running a full week and we are down to about three levels in the folder hierarchy but I have yet to see any actual files.

BTW, I have a 35Mb internet connection and do not have any similar problem with OneDrive, sync.com, or even synching iCloud photos. I get that it might take a while, but a week for just a few icons is ridiculous and the fact that it doesn't really tell me what it is going on is frustrating.

Along the way I have seen a couple of error messages saying files cannot be synchronised because the 'path length is too long'.

My impression is that the code is "thrashing" (chasing its own tail, running in circles, getting its knickers in a twist, repeating tasks without getting anywhere).

I have two theories, but no means to test them:

Theory 1. The path length restriction is too short, so that everything on my drive beyond about three levels of folders cannot be reached, and that iCloud is not detecting this properly so keeps trying anyway.

Theory 2. iCloud does not properly deal with showing the folder and icons for a data set that is bigger than the available memory (files to be downloaded on request), so keeps hitting the top limit, does not react properly and keeps trying again. I have about 1Tb of iCloud and about 100Gb of free space on the disk (really a 128Gb Boot Camp partition).

Is there anything I can do other than wait for Apple/Microsoft to fix this?

(and don't tell me to move everything to OneDrive!)

Windows, Windows 10

Posted on Dec 11, 2020 5:17 PM

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Answer 1

Dec 17, 2020 1:18 AM in response to AndyEdinburgh

iCloud for Windows cannot be set up with an iCloud drive bigger than the available disk space - Official

In a third call to Apple Support, the operator told me straight away that my theory 2 is indeed correct. iCloud for Windows is unable to sync an iCloud drive that is bigger than the available disk space at the time of initialisation. It can, he said, only deal with this situation if you start with a small disk and gradually increase it! He could not explain why iCloud for Windows is so poorly designed that (a) this is the case and (b) it does not detect the problem before it even tries to start syncing.

Theoretically, it should work if I start a new iCloud account, synchronise to Windows, and then migrate my 1.1 Tb of files gradually across. This is not easy to do because you cannot have two iCloud accounts open on one computer at the same time; you would have to migrate the files to somewhere else first then bring them back. Apart from the bother, this is a deal-breaker for me - it rules out iCloud for Windows as an option because even if I went to this trouble, I would never be able to get it working on a new computer other than by repeating the exercise. A key reason for keeping everything in a cloud is that I can add or replace computers at will. It was precisely for the capability of iCloud to keep a cloud bigger than the available local disk space that I chose it in the first place. I have a 2Tb cloud subscription and am currently using over 1Tb, but I only have one computer that can keep a complete copy, and that will run out of space soon. It works fine on two Laptops with less than 500Gb each running MacOS. All I wanted was the same under Windows. No deal!

You can of course download / upload files by hand by going to icloud.com in a browser. I am also able to sync files with OneDrive (using OneDrive for Mac) or with sync.com, but in both cases I have started with an empty drive, so cannot confirm if they still work when the cloud size exceeds the physical disk size. I do not like OneDrive much because it enforces more restrictive filenames than Mac, so you have to keep renaming files. Any bulk migration is therefore out of the question.

It would have saved me a lot of time if Apple had mentioned the limitations of iCloud for Windows in the documentation before I downloaded it. I hope I have saved you time by mentioning it here!

If anyone knows of a solution that (a) definitely works with MacOS and Windows, (b) can hold a cloud of 2TB for a reasonable price (c) can sync with all computers of any size (say 50Gb upwards) and (d) accepts all MacOS filenames, then I would like to hear about it! When I chose iCloud, it was the only solution to meet these criteria, but that was a couple of years ago: perhaps others are offering it now?

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iCloud on Windows (under Boot Camp) appears to be "thrashing"

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