Q: Does iCloud drive actually backup files?
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Jul 5, 2016 9:39 AMby Winston Churchill,You are correct, if iCloud photo library is enabled on a mobile device then photos are not backed up when the device is backed up. And yes when iCloud photo library is enabled, deleting a photo on one device deletes them from all.
iCloud drive is just a part of iCloud and has nothing to do with photos.
Your best strategy for looking after your photos would be to back up your mac using Time Machine, which is exactly what I do.
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Jul 5, 2016 11:12 AMby NicolineSA,HelpfulThank you for the reply - however, I'm still a bit confused
The first part, I got - understood that correctly, thankfully!
First off - Time Machine needs an external drive, right? However, I'm thinking through all possible risks. If my house is burning and my devices as well as my external drive burns down - I've lost it all... Therefore my question is whether I can save all of my photos onto iCloud drive and back them up there? If I use the drive application, the files/photos won't be deleted in iCloud Drive if I delete them from my device, right?
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Jul 5, 2016 11:12 AMby FoxFifth,HelpfulIt is possible to manually copy photo files to iCloud Drive but it isn't something I would recommend. Anything you add to iCloud Drive will also have a local copy on your Mac (Finder > Go menu > iCloud Drive) so you if had the photos in your Photos Library and also added them to iCloud Drive you would double the storage space required on your Mac. I'm also not sure whether they would restore properly.
I use Time Machine and an external hard drive. I also use Mozy for online backup to cover the risk of fire or a theft where both the Mac and the external drive is stolen. Mozy does handle both iPhoto and Photos libraries with no problem. They have restore instructions specific to iPhoto/Photos and I have tested the restore multiple times.
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Jul 5, 2016 10:22 AMby Winston Churchill,NicolineSA wrote:
...First off - Time Machine needs an external drive, right? However, I'm thinking through all possible risks. If my house is burning and my devices as well as my external drive burns down - I've lost it all...
That's true but you'd be unlikely to start deleting photos from the iCloud photo library whilst your house was burning down and even if you did you have 30 days to undelete them. I'm essentially saying that the chances of losing your photos in both places at once are pretty slim.
...Therefore my question is whether I can save all of my photos onto iCloud drive and back them up there? If I use the drive application, the files/photos won't be deleted in iCloud Drive if I delete them from my device, right?
Yes that's correct, you could do that if you so wished, but please do it it in addition to a Time Machine back up and not in place of.
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Jul 5, 2016 12:48 PMby FoxFifth,NicolineSA wrote:
Thank you for the response!
What exactly does Time Machine do thats any different from manually loading my files onto an external hard drive?
Also - is Mozy really any different from Google Drive for example?Time Machine automatically manages it for you and keeps hourly backups for the last 24 hours, daily backups for the last month and weekly backups for previous months. It works very well and I wouldn't be without it. The only thing I have to do manually is periodically (weekly in my case) connect my external USB hard drive to my Macbook Air. More information: Use Time Machine to back up or restore your Mac - Apple Support
As Csound1 said. Mozy is a backup service and is designed for doing backups. It will automatically keep your backup up to date. If I wasn't using Mozy in addition to Time Machine, I would be using a second external hard drive, some 3rd party backup software, and store the external drive offsite.
