Problems creating iCloud drive 'subfolders'

I am not sure, if it is by design, but I am seeing the same. In the automatically created folders "Pages", Keynote", "Numbers", "Preview" the nesting of folders seems to be limited to one level.

But for any custom folder I create on my own on the iCloud drive, for example a custom folder "MyPhotos", I can nest several levels of subfolders.

It's nice to see this confirmed by Apple. I was a bit concerned that my Yosemite installation might have issues.

I have the same problem. Can't create sub folders in iCloud Drive. I appreciate all that Apple does and the ways in which my life is less complicated as a result of my using their products. Having said that, it's the little things that can be real annoying and ultimately these will impact Apple's bottom line.

Can't create sub folders in iCloud Drive.

Just ignore the predefined folders for Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Preview and store your documents in a custom folder hierarchy of your own on iCloud. Here you can nest your folders as deeply as you like.

Got it. Thanks.

iCloud drive erased ALL of the files in my subfolders last week and apple support is unable to recover them. I migrated from other cloud services, which I've used for years without a problem at all, and three weeks into using iCloud drive, almost everything is GONE. FOREVER. THOUSANDS OF FILES. Unlike other cloud services, there is no recovery protocol with iCloud -- no history, no mirrored drive, etc. So beware! iCloud drive is NOT secure, at all!

I too had this albright2020. It was at the time of the 10.10.3 update (April 10th) which I knew because all the modified dates on the files were around that date. This could be due to the OS X update having a few cloud based updates with it as that was the time Photos app got updated on OS X also.

For me my packaged project folders got turned into folders with a .folder extension added to the package extension. With the .folder part removed, returning them back to the packaged project file (which was then recognised correctly) I was still unable to load them, in turn loosing months of work!

Thankfully my office mac, which also had the same iCloud folder, didn't have this issue and I was able to quickly back them up. But if this was my only machine I would have been without any solution and months if not years of work would have been lost in the cloud.

My faith in iCloud has now been tarnished enough to never use it for this purpose again. It makes you think how safe are all the photos in the cloud!

Back to Dropbox for me.

albright2020 wrote:

iCloud drive erased ALL of the files in my subfolders last week and apple support is unable to recover them. I migrated from other cloud services, which I've used for years without a problem at all, and three weeks into using iCloud drive, almost everything is GONE. FOREVER. THOUSANDS OF FILES. Unlike other cloud services, there is no recovery protocol with iCloud -- no history, no mirrored drive, etc. So beware! iCloud drive is NOT secure, at all!

Can I take it that you do bother with keeping a backup. Is that correct?

FYI, the iCloud drive is mirrored to ~/library/mobile documents

Thank you for this. My apple support rep suggested I take this up with corporate so I'm compiling as much information as I can on this issue. It's back to Dropbox for me too by the way!

The issue with backing up the iCloud drive is complex. I normally use a drive duplicator to backup drives, but iCloud drive blocks this kind kind of action (inexplicably), so it's literally not possible. In addition, unlike services like Dropbox or OneDrive, there is no actual folder location that iCloud occupies that would allow it to be copied to an external drive by simply dragging. This creates a situation that requires you to physically copy in place each folder within the iCloud drive, then remove and delete in place each copy one by one onto an external drive. So you need to have two times the iCloud space as you need, just to do manual backups (which is very tedious and defeats the purpose of cloud services in my mind). If you consolidate all your iCloud folders into one folder in order to simplify this process, you go back to the problem of having layers of subfolders that risk becoming erased because of this glitch. So good luck with that. The situation is really bad.

I was actually in the process of looking into a good backup solution when I lost everything. I had only been on iCloud drive 3 weeks and was still in the process of organizing files. I have used cloud services for years without a problem and rarely bothered to back things up. I also use some services that are complex and sometimes impossible to backup like Autodesk's cloud and Adobe's cloud. I've never had a problem with those services. The whole point of cloud services is to create a safe and secure storage system for your files without the hassle of endlessly duplicating and manually updating drives. If you need to go through very complex procedures every day or every week to manually back up your cloud because you know it can be erased any moment and no recovery protocols are in place, then it pretty much defeats the purpose of using cloud services at all. Note that the only cloud services without a recovery protocol is iCloud, and I learned this the hard way.

albright2020 wrote:

The issue with backing up the iCloud drive is complex.

Backing up requires you to press one button, to turn Time Machine on, then everything is backed up. Please don't pretend it is complex, it requires no more effort than turning on your Mac. And you only need to do it once.

How is that 'complex'

The rest of your post makes no sense to me at all.

The iCloud Drive that you see in Finder is the same folder as ~/library/mobile documents.

Well it may make no sense to you, but it makes sense to Apple engineers, who have acknowledged it as a very serious problem, offered me compensation, and requested that I follow up with corporate (which I will be doing). So I hardly think this is a dismissible problem or something that I'm simply not understanding correctly. The solutions you're proposing have not worked. The files are deleted everywhere. It's like they never existed at all. If Apple's engineers have not been able to find or retrieve my files, and they had access to my computer, then you are oversimplifying this and refusing to acknowledge it as a problem that even Apple has acknowledged.

Have a nice day, I do not believe your story so I'll end the discourse here.

I can't even imagine someone making up a story like this and it's kind of crazy of you to assume that. But for the record, here is the case number and manager, so feel free to verify this yourself.