Difference between iCloud & iCloud-Drive ?

Good day Karna,

Your question was my concern this morning as well because I'm in desperate need of space on my iPhone. I have 200g of iCloud storage that I paid in full for the year as well as the iCloud drive.

Now I just added a photo to the drive and erased it on my phone; exit the iCloud app, opened it again the picture was still in my iCloud drive!!

This test was done with a picture I didn't care to lose fyi.. Hope this information was helpful.

Cheers,

1) The "simple" answer to this question is that your iCloud storage is used for iCloud Backup, iCloud Drive, iCloud Photo Library, iCloud Mail (your @icloud.com email account), and data from apps that use iCloud. Your iCloud backup is only used when you restore it to your device - you cannot access the data in that backup in any other way. iCloud Drive allows you to store and access all of your documents in one place from any of your devices. Of course there are many other nuances. See this article:

iCloud Drive FAQ - Apple Support

2) See these threads for photo options with iCloud Drive:

Save Photo to iCloud Drive and I want to ut my photo library in iCloud Drive

3) iCloud Drive is a syncing mechanism, not simply external storage. It's not for off computer mass storage but for sharing working files between all devices signed into the same iCloud account. It's not a replacement for a local backup. See this article:

Get help using iCloud Drive - Apple Support

iCloud drive is only part of iCloud, it isn't usually the part where you would keep photos, this would be iCloud Photo Library which keeps your photos in sync across your chosen devices.

With iCloud Photo Library enabled, you cannot delete a photo on one device (or at iCloud.com) without deleting it from every device that uses iCloud photo library (and iCloud.com). In order to save space on your mobile devices (and indeed your Mac if you wish to do so) turn on optimisation for photos on these devices (settings > photos & camera > optimise storage on your mobile device and Photo preferences > optimise storage on your Mac)

Optimisation is dynamic, it reduces the resolution of your photos as and when needed, so you may not notice it occurring at first. However when it is needed, it is very effective and users have reported libraries being optimised to much less than 10% of their original size in some cases. My own library is about 9% of its original size on my phone.

In most cases optimising your photos should be enough to alleviate space related issues on your device. If however you have an exceptionally large library you may need to turn off iCloud photo library on your mobile device and use photo stream instead. You can then use a computer to handle photo stream photos and have them automatically imported into you iCloud photo library.

Yes, delete them from the phone and they will delete from iCloud.

You are welcome.