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why can't whole computer back up to icloud using time machine?

I have time machine, and the 2TB icloud. I'm only using a fraction of icloud because I wanted not to use the external drives, but instead use icloud. But I can't select icloud as a backup disk. Why not? Anyone do this in some other way? MacOS ventura.

MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 13.3

Posted on Apr 24, 2023 7:00 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Apr 25, 2023 10:58 AM

Juhwawa wrote:

I have time machine, and the 2TB icloud. I'm only using a fraction of icloud because I wanted not to use the external drives, but instead use icloud. But I can't select icloud as a backup disk. Why not?

Because iCloud Drive is a syncing feature, not an off-computer backup system. It's used so that multiple Macs can share the same files, like iCloud Library does with photos, when signed into the same Apple ID.




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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Apr 25, 2023 10:58 AM in response to Juhwawa

Juhwawa wrote:

I have time machine, and the 2TB icloud. I'm only using a fraction of icloud because I wanted not to use the external drives, but instead use icloud. But I can't select icloud as a backup disk. Why not?

Because iCloud Drive is a syncing feature, not an off-computer backup system. It's used so that multiple Macs can share the same files, like iCloud Library does with photos, when signed into the same Apple ID.




Apr 25, 2023 9:33 AM in response to Juhwawa

As noted above, there are web based backup services. iCloud is NOT a backup service for Macs. It does have some of those features but it is designed for cross platform sharing. Time Machine is designed to backup to an external disk which is dedicated to backups. If you are relying on iCloud as your backup, you are going to loose data.

why can't whole computer back up to icloud using time machine?

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