Backup of Desktop and Documents in

Hey tommmy,

These are really good questions:

1: You'll need to enable that feature on any device where you want to store the original photo on the device itself, rather than a lower resolution version to save space on the device. Learn more here: Download iCloud photos and videos

2: The space optimization feature is designed to save your local device storage and not your iCloud storage. On iCloud, you will still have the full resolution versions of the photos unless you disable iCloud Photos entirely. If you enable this feature, however, iCloud will cut down the storage requirements of all those photos by housing lower-resolution versions on the device instead.

Cheers!

Hey there, tommmy!

Thanks so much for using Apple Support Communities.

iCloud Drive is a really great way to sync all of your documents between the Apple devices you use. However, since that data resides in iCloud there isn't necessarily a way to back it up via iCloud. With that being said, if you want to download that data and create a physical backup (or back it up using a cloud service), you can do so by following the instructions in this article: Archive or make copies of the information you store in iCloud

We hope this helps!