Is there a way to upload files to iCloud without using hard disk space on my local machine

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Level 1

4 points

Is there a way to upload files to iCloud without using hard disk space on my local machine

To whom it may concern,

Is there a way to copy documents to iCloud without using hard disk space on my local machine?

I recently purchased 1T of storage from iCloud, however when I try copying files across, the machine appears to store them in a temporary location "$HOME/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDoc". It also appears to use actual disk space permanently do this. Unfortunately for me it means I can not copy all the documents I need across because they are on multiple patricians and the sum of used space on these patricians exceeds the free space on my system drive.

I have been tempted to use a different product the patrician containing case sensitive documents such as source code, such as GitHub and using iCloud for generic documents and multi-media files (such as music and photos). Would this be the best way to go? If so can I downgrade the space I am using currently on iCloud? The case sensitivity of the file names is important to me.

The system I am using is:

Yosmite 10.10.5

My patrician table looks like follows:

$ df -h

Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity iused ifree %iused Mounted on

/dev/disk1 370Gi 361Gi 8.4Gi 98% 94688745 2196985 98% /

devfs 185Ki 185Ki 0Bi 100% 640 0 100% /dev

map -hosts 0Bi 0Bi 0Bi 100% 0 0 100% /net

map auto_home 0Bi 0Bi 0Bi 100% 0 0 100% /home

map -fstab 0Bi 0Bi 0Bi 100% 0 0 100% /Network/Servers

/dev/disk0s4 95Gi 43Gi 52Gi 46% 11312233 13606865 45% /Volumes/Macintosh_HD_Case_Sensitive

Posted on May 3, 2016 8:02 PM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

194,743 points

May 4, 2016 1:18 AM in response to azzmosphere

To use iCloud Drive with having local cops on your Mac you would be restricted to the web interface at www.icloud.com.

As long as iCloud Drive is enabled in your system preferences, your Mac will mirror all files on iCloud drive as shadow copies, so you have access to them, when you are working off-line. iCloud drive is meant to be a central storage for your Mac, kept in sync across all your devices, but not as a purely external storage to free space on your Mac.

To use it a an external storage only, move all documents back from iCloud Drive to keep them safe, disable iCloud Drive in System Peferences > iCloud, then sign www.icloud.com with your AppleID and upload all documents using the web page. But if you do this, you cannot see iCloud Drive in the Finder as a disk. You can only upload and download from the webpage.

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