I just purchased 200GB of space on iCloud because I want to backup my entire computer around 80GB to the cloud as my Lacie hard drives will not longer mount.
Is there a way to do this in one step? I am running 10.7.5 and do not particularly want to upgrade as it works fine and I have very little room on computer (which is why I want to backup and get rid of stuff. thanks!
MacBook Air (11-INCH, MID 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.4)
iCloud can only be used for Mobile Device backups, not to backup your Mac, you can backup your iPhone, iPad, iPod to icloud, see this link: iCloud: Backup and restore overview
However, you can store copies of your documents in iCloud, if you upgrade to Yosemite. Then iCloud Drive will be available, see: iCloud Drive FAQ
You're welcome! 🙂
Sorry, that it was no better news.
Dear Léonie, I recently purchased the 20 gb iCloud facility, having been informed in the Apple Store Bromley (UK) that I could back up my entire iPhotos to iCloud; so that I could restore my MAC. Is this not the case - can you help me? Tony
The Apple Store Bromley (UK) is ahead of time.
An iPhoto Library cannot be stored on any cloud service. It needs to be stored on a locally mounted drive, formatted MacOS Extended (Journaled). Moving it to iCloud Drive will corrupt it for sure.
The Apple Geniuses were probably referring to iCloud Photo Library (Beta). It is not yet available on the Mac, it is currently being Beta tested. When MacOS X 10.10.3 will be released later this spring, it will come with the Photos.app for the Mac, an then you will be able to convert your iPhoto Library to a Photos Library and store it in iCloud, see Apple - OS X - Photos Preview
To restore your Mac make a full Time Machine backup on an external drive, you need it anyway. then you can make a clean install and restore the mac from your backup.
Thank you for that.
I am a tad nervous about restoring the MAC and I wanted 2 back-ups in existence [time capsule+icloud]. How can I be certain that I have a full back up on my time capsule? It does appear to have back up correctly.
I wanted to keep the photos and videos 'of' the MAC to keep the machine 'lean and faster' - can I leave them on the time capsule and retrieve them individually as and when I need them?
Regards Tony
Tony Conboy wrote:
Thank you for that.
I am a tad nervous about restoring the MAC and I wanted 2 back-ups in existence [time capsule+icloud]. How can I be certain that I have a full back up on my time capsule? It does appear to have back up correctly.
Make a clone (Carbon Copy Cloner) on a separate hard drive.
I wanted to keep the photos and videos 'of' the MAC to keep the machine 'lean and faster' - can I leave them on the time capsule and retrieve them individually as and when I need them?
Regards Tony
No, you can not. TM is a backup, it is not possible to use it as extra storage.
I wanted to keep the photos and videos 'of' the MAC to keep the machine 'lean and faster' - can I leave them on the time capsule and retrieve them individually as and when I need them?
Keep the iPhoto Library on a second external drive for the time being. It cannot be long till MacOS X 10.10.3 will be released, and then you can use your iCloud Storage for iCloud Photo Library.
Thank you again.
So I can, simply, have the iPhotos 'pulling off' from the ex HD instead of from within my MAC; thus freeing up space.
If I buy an external HD tomorrow, is there a simple way to drag the iPhoto library over; the two ex HD I have had for years (before I bought the Time Capsule) seems to make the data, photos,files encrypted - what I mean is I can never simply see the 'stuff' I have stored; it always appears to be nothing that can be easily view and retrieve.
It will depend on the file system on your external drive. Any external drive you are using with iPhoto needs to be formatted MacOS Extended (Journaled). If it has a different files ystem, reformat the drive with Disk Utility. The procedure is described here for Aperture libraries, but the same goes for iPhoto Libraries, see:
Format external drives to Mac OS Extended before using with Aperture - Apple Support https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201909
Once the drive is correctly formatted, connect it directly to your mac with USB or thunderbolt, wait for the icon to appear on your Desktop, and then drag your iPhoto Library over to the drive using the Finder.
Double-click the copied library to open it in iPhoto and test it thoroughly before you delete the original on your internal drive.
I thought with iCloud drive you could drag and drop your documents and photos to the cloud?
You can with iCloud Drive and indeed you can even make back ups of your Mac to it, but the OP doesn't have iCloud Drive because their OS is too old and doesn't support it
I thought with iCloud drive you could drag and drop your documents and photos to the cloud?
You can drag and drop photos and documents to iCloud Drive, yes, but not photo libraries. If you try to drag an iPhoto Library or an Aperture library to iCloud Drive, the updating across devices will corrupt the links in the relational databases. The libraries will no longer work.
Wait, until iCloud Photo Library will be released. The Photos.app for Mac has beeb designed to work with iCloud Photo Library.
backup entire computer contents on iCloud
