External hdd to iCloud Drive

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Alibaba89 Author

Level 1

10 points

External hdd to iCloud Drive

Dear Community,

I am currently trying to export files/folders from an external hdd to my iCloud Drive.

I have enough storage on my iCloud, however I don't have that much storage on my MacBook.

The way I have tried to transfer the files is by transferring from my external to my MacBook folder "iCloud Drive".

I experienced that this didn't free up any storage-space on my MacBook.

What am I doing wrong?

I though that after having transferred to the folder named "iCloud Drive", it would automatically free up the storage..

Hoping someone has a solution.

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 11.2

Posted on Feb 15, 2021 1:56 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

David McKinlay

Level 7

22,540 points

Feb 15, 2021 2:06 AM in response to Alibaba89

You're not doing anything "wrong" and there is no problem requiring a "solution"

The only error you are making is misunderstanding the nature and purpose of iCloud Drive. iCloud is not an offsite repository where you can deposit unused files to free up space on your computer iOS device, it is a dynamic space to access your files from any of your devices anywhere in the world. iCloud is a syncing service between your Mac and iCloud Drive. An addition, edit or deletion on one will be copied on the other.

The iCloud Drive folder sitting in your Mac's Finder is your end of a two-way system between your Mac and your space on Apple's server. Your external HDD is effectively part of your Mac in your example. If you upload from it to iCloud a copy of the same upload will be copied down to your Mac's iCloud Drive folder.

Read the iCloud FAQ and What is iCloud Drive?

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Answer 2

Alibaba89 Author

Level 1

10 points

Feb 17, 2021 11:21 AM in response to David McKinlay

The thing is..

I had a third-party data recovery shop help me with fixing some data loss for me.

I was on OS X Catalina and was updating to Big Sur, but then my Mac crashed on me, and all of a sudden I couldn't get access to anything.

I took it to the shop, and they luckily found my data, and transferred it to an external hdd for me.

I have been going through all the stuff, and I found some link, describing some helpful stuff to get from your user, i.e. the Library folder.

I found the folder named MobileSync containing old copy's of iPhone backups.

I have quite a lot so its like 190 gb the whole folder..

So I transferred that to my "iCloud Drive" folder, so that I could always have a copy on the cloud, however it seems like it has uploaded on iCloud, but it hasn't changed anything in terms of my MacBook storage.

I have clicked on "Optimize...Mac.." in settings, however it still hasn't cleared up any space.

I thought that once you uploaded stuff on iCloud, there wouldn't be a physical copy of the files on your MacBook.

That whenever you needed, you could download files from iCloud..

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External hdd to iCloud Drive

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