iCloud drive data - location etc.

Totally get your confusion—Apple’s iCloud Drive setup is powerful, but it can definitely be a bit opaque, especially with how macOS handles "Optimize Mac Storage." Regardless, you can have your documents stored locally on your iMac and also synced to iCloud. The key is understanding a few settings that control how this syncing behaves.

To make sure your files stay on your Mac and also sync to iCloud:

1. Go to System Settings > [Your Name] > iCloud > iCloud Drive.
2. Click "Options…" next to iCloud Drive.
3. Make sure "Desktop & Documents Folders" is checked (this includes those folders in iCloud).
4. Most importantly: Turn OFF "Optimize Mac Storage" at the bottom of that panel.

When “Optimize Mac Storage” is enabled, macOS offloads older or infrequently accessed files to save local space. This is what causes files to appear only in the cloud and not physically on your iMac. When you disable this, macOS will download and retain a full local copy of all your iCloud Drive files.

After disabling the optimize setting, macOS may take a little while to download everything back to your drive, depending on how much you have in iCloud. You can monitor progress via Finder > iCloud Drive, and check file sizes and icons—files with a little cloud icon haven't been fully downloaded yet.

Anthony1741 wrote:

Thanks, super info.

How do I direct which drive I want them on (if it's possible)? There is a folder called Documents on my internal fusion drive, however I want them on my SSD where the OS lives and boots from. I have not been able to create a folder called Documents on the SSD.

The iCloud files are physically stored here:

your_username/Library/Mobile Documents/

I do not believe you can change this, or if it is changeable it is not easy to do and there is no assurance that this change would persist properly across future MacOS updates.

So if your user Library folder is already on that external drive, I BELIEVE these iCloud documents will be physically on that same drive. If your SSD external boot drive does not have your user account folder and all the folders within it (e.g. Library, Documents, etc.), if those are all still on the internal drive, then the iCloud files will also be on the internal. Note that I am talking here about the user specific Library folder, not the computer-wide Library folder.

There has been a lot of discussion about whether is really is feasible to move one's user account and Home folder over to an external drive when using a recent version of the MacOS. Some claim to have made this work, but then there are many posts in Discussions from folks who did this and it stopped working after a recent OS update. I do not believe that Apple actually supports doing this under the latest MacOS, despite many who argue that it can be done from the Advanced setting within Users and Groups Settings. But changing that setting does not migrate everything to the external, some of that must be done manually and as I said, there are many posts from folks who managed to get it working but it failed to work after an OS update.

In the past, it was possible to "clone" the user account files/folders from the internal drive to the external drive and then run everything from the external drive. This might not work as smoothly with the most recent Macs and MacOS. This link Use an external SSD as your startup disk … - Apple Community might be helpful in that regard. Note that the link lists a limited number of older Macs that this will work with.

Anthony1741 wrote:

Interesting, I have checked both drives, Fusion and SSD. Both have a folder called "Library" and within it they both have a folder "Webserver" and within that there are 3 folders "CGI-Executables" "Documents" "share".

Further confusion is that in the finder left hand pane there are two "Macintosh HD" s. The first one in the list will show an image of an SSD, whereas the second one shows an image of a hard drive. The second one is ejectable???

Unsure quie what to do next - maybe change the iCloud settings and see where they land.

Those are part of the standard macOS setup. They have nothing to do with iCloud.

They are there if you want to host a website from your Mac (well, not really--that would be a disaster). They can be use for website development and testing.

CGI-Executables are scripts that run on the web server. Documents are the parts that make up the pages of your website. Share appears to hold the httpd manual.

Anthony1741 wrote:

Thanks, super info.

How do I direct which drive I want them on (if it's possible)?

You can't.

There is a folder called Documents on my internal fusion drive, however I want them on my SSD where the OS lives and boots from. I have not been able to create a folder called Documents on the SSD.

That's not how a Fusion Drive works. macOS puts the OS and some things that need fast access onto the SSD part of the Fusion Drive. Everything else goes on the HDD part of the Fusion Drive. However, if you can see both the SSD part and the HDD part in the Finder, then you don't have a Fusion Drive. You just have the two independent parts, completely unrelated to each other.