HT201104: iCloud Drive FAQ

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Victoria Herring
Level 2 (297 points)
Mac OS X

Q: Are the contents of iCloud Drive backed up by TimeMachine or can they be by some other app?

I have papers etc. on the iCloud Drive that I do want to be sure are backed up  = either thru Super Duper clone or Time Machine or thru my CrashPlan cloud system = is the iCloud Drive contents like Dropbox, essentially mirrored ??  or are the contents only on the drive and not backed up??

iMac with Retina 5K display, OS X Yosemite (10.10.2)

Posted on Feb 24, 2016 5:41 PM

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Victoria Herring

Q: Are the contents of iCloud Drive backed up by TimeMachine or can they be by some other app?

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  • by babowa,Helpful

    babowa babowa Feb 24, 2016 7:04 PM in response to Victoria Herring
    Level 7 (31,878 points)
    iPad
    Feb 24, 2016 7:04 PM in response to Victoria Herring

    Cloning apps such as SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner can copy/clone the content of hard drives; I do not believe they can back up things in the cloud. And, although I do not use Time Machine, I do not believe it can either. Here are some Apple articles on icloud storage and backing it up:

     

    http://www.apple.com/icloud/icloud-drive/

     

    Archive or make copies of your iCloud data - Apple Support

  • by Victoria Herring,

    Victoria Herring Victoria Herring Feb 24, 2016 7:07 PM in response to babowa
    Level 2 (297 points)
    Mac OS X
    Feb 24, 2016 7:07 PM in response to babowa

    Thanks so much = I not only have items in each apps folder == more importantly I've moved some folders and documents there just to have access to them while on another machine = not unlike Dropbox == I gather what I can do is move them back and then back up the hard drive they're on = ???

  • by babowa,

    babowa babowa Feb 24, 2016 7:16 PM in response to Victoria Herring
    Level 7 (31,878 points)
    iPad
    Feb 24, 2016 7:16 PM in response to Victoria Herring

    I don't see why not; actually I think that's a great idea. You will have to remember that if you update any cloud content to also have it included in your next backup.

  • by jokorpo,Helpful

    jokorpo jokorpo May 9, 2016 4:54 AM in response to Victoria Herring
    Level 1 (17 points)
    May 9, 2016 4:54 AM in response to Victoria Herring

    The content of your iCloud Drive is included in a regular Time Machine backup. The path to that content is YourUserAccount/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/(or the application associated with the files). In Finder you cannot see the original/mirrored/updated content of the Mobile Documents folder, only in the backup. In Terminal (or in a Wine-applications Open file-window) you can see the content. So we don't need to update the files "the Babowa way", they will be updated with Time Machine.


    Mac mini, Os X El Capitan