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rosie@thefarm

Q: can I back up to iCloud before renewing the HD?

can I back up to iCloud before renewing the HD with a SSD? 24 inch iMac, early 2009, 2.66 GHz intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB memory 1067 MHz

401.55GB free storage

Apparently the optical drive cannot be replaced in this old model (according to Mac certified local store).

iMac, iOS 5.0.1

Posted on Jul 8, 2015 3:08 AM

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Q: can I back up to iCloud before renewing the HD?

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  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Jul 8, 2015 3:15 AM in response to rosie@thefarm
    Level 10 (106,848 points)
    iLife
    Jul 8, 2015 3:15 AM in response to rosie@thefarm

    iCloud Drive is no backup of your Mac.  You can store documents and data there, but your applications and the contents of your user library with all your settings will not be saved, and so you cannot restore your mac from the iCloud Drive contents.  This is different for iOS devices, that can be restored from an iCloud backup.

     

    To backup your Mac get yourself a portable drive and set up Time Machine to backup your Mac completely to the external drive. The first backup may take a long time, but subsequent backps will be much faster, because only the changes need to be saved. This is faster than a cloud backup, and you will not have to depend on a network connection to get your data back.