iCloud 2TB iCloud Drive account full, what are the best options I have for photo storage?

[prvt.donut]

So my account is full, I have it family shared with my wife, videos are the main culprit. The problem is that there are no upgrade plans above 2TB.

What are some good ways of dealing with these situations? Should I try offloading to RAID NAS drives? Would be great to have a 10TB RAID NAS that can automatically connect to our iCloud accounts to retain copies of photos and videos. The joy of the Apple iCloud solution however is essentially having constant access to the entire library without filling the Mac and devices, plus retention and backup policies are handled by the iCloud terms of service.

Anyway. What’s the best way to proceed? Any ideas and recommendations?

 

[kaardowiq]

With Apple One you can extend it up to 4TB. One includes the 2TB plan und you can still add your personal 2TB on top. Hopefully, we will see some bigger subscriptions soon. Even 4TB is less, when it comes to 4K 60FPS recording…

 

[Ted13]

In my case, I unfortunately upgraded to Apple One back when I had plenty of free space, merging iCloud Storage it with my wife on 2TB iCloud Storage under Apple One -- is there any way to get an additional 2TB?

I realize that I could have done it had I never merged our storage, but can it be unmerged without risking losing data?

How can I at a minimum backup all the full res. photo and video data from Photos that is now just in iCloud, not in any ow my devices?

I keep getting this email from Apple, but clicking on "purchase individual iCloud+ plans" never works:

Your family is almost out of iCloud storage.

Since you are already sharing the 2 TB storage plan, you and your family members will soon need to purchase individual iCloud+ plans or manage your storage so you’ll have enough space to keep your photos, videos, documents, and device backups safe in iCloud.

The iCloud Team

 

[Ted13]

Specifically I keep getting this error from System Preferences:iCloud

"You can't manage your storage at this time. Wait a movement and then try again."

 

[prvt.donut]

In the end I have just moved my wife off my 2TB plan and put her into her own 2TB plan.

Simple. Now we have 4TB. Problem solved……..

Essentially I’m just pushing it down the road. I tried to use my 3TB networked time capsule as a mounted drive to setup a new photos library, but Apple don’t allow us to store an iCloud linked photo library on a network location. It let’s me make the library there, but doesn’t allow me to set my iCloud to sync to it, so I need to attach a big disk locally to my Mac in order to enable a complete local copy of all my library.

I tried the “official way” login to iCloud.com and download batches of photos and videos. I downloaded 3000 videos so far that way but it is eating up too much time, I think I should just get a big thunderbolt drive and then at least I have a local copy. Which I then need to duplicate (time capsule?) for redundancy if I want to take off the iCloud library.

Any good cheap cloud hosting solutions available?

To be honest, QNAP and other NAS solutions are pretty good, but need to be monitored and replicated offsite for resilience.

The amount of money that will cost is going to be several years of iCloud. Personally I think the storage rate Apple charges is pretty good compared to the competition and again is seemlessly integrated.

My preferred solution would be to keep in iCloud and have a good easy way of keeping a local physical copy of everything. Again, an iCloud connected NAS would be ideal in that regard, but I have yet to find one.

 

[BigMcGuire]

With Apple One you can extend it up to 4TB. One includes the 2TB plan und you can still add your personal 2TB on top. Hopefully, we will see some bigger subscriptions soon. Even 4TB is less, when it comes to 4K 60FPS recording…

This works. I would have done this. You can add to the 2tb plan for 4tb total.

 

[lostPod]

I use amazon photos (included with prime) and google photos (used to be free BUT I like the setup so much I started paying for it) to backup all my photos / videos. I never liked the photo gallery integration of icloud...

The photo search AI and categories with Google Photos is far superior than iCloud (yes I know, because they use user's data)

 

[kaardowiq]

This works. I would have done this. You can add to the 2tb plan for 4tb total.

View attachment 2095037

while this works, it’s really expensive. With more and more 4K and High Res files this immediately needed. I’m looking forward to see 4, 6, 8, 10tb plans. Maybe up to 20tb. For sure, this ones wouldn’t be cheap but some people will need them and pay (like me).

 

[kaardowiq]

I use amazon photos (included with prime) and google photos (used to be free BUT I like the setup so much I started paying for it) to backup all my photos / videos. I never liked the photo gallery integration of icloud...

The photo search AI and categories with Google Photos is far superior than iCloud (yes I know, because they use user's data)

With iOS 15 it got better and with 16.0 I was amazed how much better the object recognition as well as the face recognition got. Faces are now even in backgrounds detected. Tbh, this is all validated by the local AI and may differ on the used end devices. Probably the results may differ when only using iPhone 7 or an top notch device.

 

[Expos of 1969]

Specifically I keep getting this error from System Preferences:iCloud

"You can't manage your storage at this time. Wait a movement and then try again."

That may not be due to your specific situation. I often get that message when trying to manage storage from my phone. I never get the message when on my Mac.

 

[flynz4]

I tried the “official way” login to iCloud.com and download batches of photos and videos. I downloaded 3000 videos so far that way but it is eating up too much time, I think I should just get a big thunderbolt drive and then at least I have a local copy. Which I then need to duplicate (time capsule?) for redundancy if I want to take off the iCloud library.

Any good cheap cloud hosting solutions available?

I use iCloud to store/sync all of mr photos & videos. On my Mac Studio, I have Apple Photos set to keep copies of the originals. This lets me have all 77K photos/videos on every device, plus have the full resolution originals on my primary computer.

I back up my my Mac Studio on Blackblaze.com. This gives me a method to have everything I own backed up with version history.

Personally, I do not consider syncing software like iCloud, Dropbox, etc to be backup. If a file is deleted on any device, it is gone everywhere. However, syncing is extremely useful.

 

[aajeevlin]

I use iCloud to store/sync all of mr photos & videos. On my Mac Studio, I have Apple Photos set to keep copies of the originals. This lets me have all 77K photos/videos on every device, plus have the full resolution originals on my primary computer.

I back up my my Mac Studio on Blackblaze.com. This gives me a method to have everything I own backed up with version history.

Personally, I do not consider syncing software like iCloud, Dropbox, etc to be backup. If a file is deleted on any device, it is gone everywhere. However, syncing is extremely useful.

Omg…I’m doing the exact same thing. On my Mac Mini, I have iPhone connected to a folder on the external drive and I have my and my wife’s photo pulling down original size and backblaze running in the background.

But even with that solution once someone hits 2 or 4TB we are going to be having the same issue was OP as well.

We also do use google for backup (I know I’m paranoid). But google photo is great to share photos with all the other in the family that has android. I’m wondering if there is a way to download the stuff from google photo automatically then I can back it up with backblaze. Then I can remove all the photos from iCloud (I know painful but works). Since google storage can be easily purchased beyond 2TB.

 

[flynz4]

If you are an Apple user, then iCloud is just really hard to beat. The syncing across all of my devices is superb (I am 100% Apple). My 2TB shared Apple One iCloud account is only about 50% full right now... almost all photographs. Documents tend to be small, and as time goes on, I am jettisoning movies, except the camcorder videos of the kids growing up. Anything can be watched on demand now days... or maybe better said... there is much more available video to watch that I'll never care to watch one of my old ripped DVDs.

I can easily upgrade to 4TB of iCloud if I needed it, and if for some reason I did, I'm sure Apple would have more upgrade plans available by then.

Having said that, as mentioned previously, I do not consider iCloud (or any other cloud syncing service) to be backup. I have a true backup solution both locally in my home, and to the cloud (Backblaze). Both have deep history for retrieval of inadvertently deleted data.

/Jim

 

[aajeevlin]

To me, the real issues is that Apple doesn't make it clear as far as storage option goes. Like Google Photo has 2TB all the way up to 20TB. So, even if I do go over I know where I stand with Google. Apple's way of adding iCloud 2TB then by adding Apple one+ just to get to the 4TB seems to me like an after thought. Also, it's been quite a few years since we have had 2TB and Apple one+ and I see no sign of Apple announcing additional storage levels.

Between my partner and I we are at 1.5TB, we are lucky that the kids are young so we don't expect them to generate any photos and videos. But I can't imaging if you have a family of six, with parents + 4 kids, you will be filling up that iCould storage rather quickly.

 

[kaardowiq]

Yep, especially when it comes to family sharing 2 and 4TB are jokes…

 

[nutmac]

I wish Apple would offer a cheaper Apple One plan with 2TB storage. For instance, $14.99/month for Apple Arcade, Apple TV+, and iCloud+ 2TB, the same $7 discount as Apple One Individual.

 

[kaardowiq]

On the weekend I started my migration for photos/videos to Google. The only one that offers higher plans by default. However, there I can be sure to be safe for future. As a result, this may probably make me leave the apple eco system within the next two or three years when my current devices are outdated.

 

[BigMcGuire]

On the weekend I started my migration for photos/videos to Google. The only one that offers higher plans by default. However, there I can be sure to be safe for future. As a result, this may probably make me leave the apple eco system within the next two or three years when my current devices are outdated.

The only thing that scares me about Google is that in a few years they could decide to scrap things all together. While I use Google Photos, I don't know if I'd rely on it completely. I was a beta user of Picasa (Google Photos back in the day) long time ago and I've seen it over the years - Google is definitely in the mood of pulling back features, bandwidth, and abilities these days.

 

[mcgandalf]

+1. Apple really needs to increase their top level of iCloud Drive storage.

I would happily pay for 10-20 TB of storage if need be.

I am currently on 3.2 TB of storage, split across two 2 TB iCloud Drive and Google Drive plans. I would vastly rather consolidate it all in iCloud (I'm loathe to faff around with iCloud+, as I'll never use Apple Music or anything else).

2 TB really isn't much these days.

 

[BigMcGuire]

+1. Apple really needs to increase their top level of iCloud Drive storage.

I would happily pay for 10-20 TB of storage if need be.

I am currently on 3.2 TB of storage, split across two 2 TB iCloud Drive and Google Drive plans. I would vastly rather consolidate it all in iCloud (I'm loathe to faff around with iCloud+, as I'll never use Apple Music or anything else).

2 TB really isn't much these days.

Agreed. I would hope we are very close to the time where Apple should increase storage.