iCloud Drive - Request for Advice and a Warning

TL;DR How does really iCloud Drive works? After all, it has to use space on your drive

Situation

Past Friday, my external HDD WD 3TB crashed. I had 2 years worth of Time Machine backups plus some personal files I cannot store in my computer, which only has 500GB.

While I panicked trying to rescue as much data as possible (side note: on Monday I had a job interview -for which I needed data on that drive- that I have now missed), I upgraded my iCloud plan from 200GB to 2TB, thinking that that would allow me to store files which I couldn't store in my local drive, along with other external drives, thus reducing the possibility of completely losing data.

So I started moving things to iCloud and two new external drives, also enabled Optimize my Storage, Store in iCloud and whatnot.

During the several hours of copying files back and forth, and coincidentally while I was in front of the computer, I got a warning that my computer was running out of space, there was not enough cache and that Terminal had to reduce logs.

Findings

Trying to see where was really the issue, and where the biggest files where in use, I turned to the System Information > Storage > Manage... > Recommendations. To my surprise, there were 595GB free out of 500GB, which is obviously is wrong.

So I run a Terminal df -h, and saw a completely different story:

Ignoring the i* numbers, which are also obviously incorrect, I saw that, indeed, only 4GB were free in the laptop local drive.

Not knowing what to believe but inclined to trust the Terminal more than the GUI, I used also OmniDiskSweeper, of which I didn't take any screenshots, that showed that my ~/Library/Mobile Documents was using over 400GB.

I double panicked, I needed that data somewhere, and while I wait for a proper local NAS to arrive with redundancy and plenty of space, I was simply not able to store anywhere those 3TB worth of data and backups from my failed drive other than copying them to another external drive which could also fail.

Request for Advice

I could understand that, while the files are uploading and for the sake of copying faster, Finder does not really display the real status of the copy, but that the OS copies locally somewhere (Mobile Documents or com.apple.bird are good candidates) and this copy is in turn sending the files over to iCloud.

iCloud Drive, "Optimize Mac Storage" and "Store in iCloud" don't offer an additional storage to some files (except Music, Photos, others maybe) but basically everything must and will be stored locally. So in my case, nothing above 500GB could eventually go to iCloud because files cannot be stored in the local drive.

• Is my understanding correct? (my hard-learned you-should-read-it-before guess: it is)
• What's then the advantage of Cloud Drive, "Optimize Mac Storage" and "Store in iCloud", i.e.: when it's worth using it and when it's not? Having them on a flash drive is more convenient, does not require a connection, all backups can be scheduled and okay, maybe the multi-device makes the difference. Other than that, iCloud is just another rather expensive backup system.
• Is there a way to configure iCloud Drive as a drive which stores files I cannot, or don't want to, store locally in my computer? (my guess: there is not).
• Is there anything obvious I could be doing wrong to make three parts of the OS display three different available spaces?
• How do I safely cleanup my current set up? Do I disable Store in iCloud? If so, do I keep files on my Mac or do I leave them on the cloud? What will happen when I enable it back again: will they sync again to my Documents folder, will they be kept as a separate folder somewhere?

I'm no audio or video developer, and I don't play games on my laptop, but I do need several VMs running locally and some space for databases which I need to work with locally, while I'm travelling and internet is slow or just does not work.

I use Apple devices for work and leisure, so anything Apple specific would be better (i.e.: APFS support, HFS support, Time Machine compatibility etc.).

Which backup software and cloud options are people using and which setup? I'm looking for real people experiences, good and bad, from people backing up to the cloud either free or paid. Dropbox? Google Drive? Microsoft OneDrive? Acronis? Amazon S3? Or it's just really worth paying for several TBs of hard drive in a NAS

Warning

While it may look like it, all the above is not a rant. I don't blame Apple but myself for being too much self-confident on my long time use of Apple devices and in a moment of panic, try to salvage whatever I can, while I can. But for those who have not understood what iCloud is, don't learn it the hard way.

But I missed a job interview and I panicked as few times before.

To make it short: iCloud backs up whatever you can store in your local disk up to 50GB size for a single file or 2TB for the whole iCloud drive. Which might be good if you own several devices, or you want to share that space with your family for device backups.

iCloud Drive is not storage for anything as it will not store anything not previously residing on any of your devices. iCloud Drive is not like Dropbox or other services mentioned above. If you plan to buy a Mac, spend more on a bigger drive, and buy external ones (several), first and before thinking of iCloud.

If you plan to upgrade your iCloud plan, be aware that you will not be able to copy files and delete them from your computer (with perhaps the exceptions mentioned of pictures).

I will immediately downgrade my current plan, send some feedback to Apple to request iCloud Drive, at least for those of us paying for the service, to allow storing any kind of files.

And also a request to display somewhere the real space available in your disk, consistently. This is a facepalm as few I have previously seen by Apple (root without password was another good example).

Added key question about tidying up current setup Message was edited by: mabaeyens