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JurajBartos Author

Level 1

4 points

iCloud storage policy

I understand, that the iCloud policy is that all the files stored on my iCloud account should be available also on my mac for offline use.

This leads to unfortunate situation, when my internal HDD is 512 GB and I pay for 2 TB iCloud Storage.

It is obvious, that I can not store all files I want, simply because I should have to have more than 2 TB internal system HDD (Macintosh HD) to have a theoretical chance to use all the iCloud storage to store my local files on iCloud. It is of course maximum which would be rarely met (Photos, iPhone and iPad backups take some hundreds of GB themselves), but in my case I have some 800 GB available on my iCloud, but since I have 30 GB free on my internal HDD only, I can upload less than that, because all the iCloud files uploaded from my mac are mirrored on my internal HDD in ...User/Library/Mobile Documents.

It is not the best way how to spend money on cloud services anymore, since the connections are available everywhere and they are faster and faster, so I can easily download the file(s) from cloud and I do not need them mirrored on my mac.

There should be at least an option to choose if I want to have them mirrored and synced or not, even better - to have a folder where could be files I want to sync and use across my devices and folder, which should be just a storage for files available to download.

Or am I missing something?

Posted on Feb 14, 2021 1:56 PM

Top-ranking reply

LACAllen

Level 8

43,500 points

Posted on Feb 15, 2021 8:42 AM

JurajBartos wrote:

Thank you for clarifying.

Then 2 TB is just a theoretical amount of storage space, which is not possible to use until I upgrade my internal HDD to 2++ TB. This fact leads obviously to downgrading the iCloud storage.

That's a very simplistic way to look at it.

If you have multiple Apple devices, each can use your 2TB for content syncing and backups.

You have 2TB of iCloud storage. You may not be able to use it all.

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iCloud storage policy

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