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circatee

Contributor
Original poster
Nov 30, 2014
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Where I am
Has anyone here switched from the likes of Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, etcetera to iCloud Drive?

Worth the switch (centralizing everything with Apple)?
 
I made the switch from OneDrive to iCloud Drive. I was using both actually but was annoyed at a bug in OneDrive where if I searched for a file it wouldn’t show the file. Iirc, it wouldn’t show any results most of the time, if not all of the time.

I have been paying for OneDrive storage and iCloud storage. I transferred the vast majority of the files in OneDrive to iCloud.

My thoughts:

OneDrive has a better payment structure. I can pay once a year and I even get a workplace discount. I wish I wasn’t stuck paying every month for iCloud.

iCloud Drive search works fine and having it on my iPhone, iPad, and Mac is very convenient when accessing my files.

I don’t like that iCloud maxes out at 2TB unless you resort to various workarounds.

It’s almost time for my OneDrive subscription to renew and I thought I would cancel it but after having some issues on my Mac where I was afraid I would delete my entire iCloud Drive contents, I’m leaning towards keeping the OneDrive subscription. I’m thinking to just use it as a backup source and continue to use iCloud as my main storage provider.

I also make heavy use of Google Drive (paid as well) but that’s mostly used for specific purposes. I also have external USB sticks and a T7 Shield SSD that is storing important files but I enjoy the convenience of cloud storage.

Overall, I enjoy iCloud Drive and find it worth paying for. It’s not without flaws though and I don’t recommend putting all your valuable eggs in the iCloud basket.
 
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I made the switch from OneDrive to iCloud Drive. I was using both actually but was annoyed at a bug in OneDrive where if I searched for a file it wouldn’t show the file. Iirc, it wouldn’t show any results most of the time, if not all of the time.

I have been paying for OneDrive storage and iCloud storage. I transferred the vast majority of the files in OneDrive to iCloud.

My thoughts:

OneDrive has a better payment structure. I can pay once a year and I even get a workplace discount. I wish I wasn’t stuck paying every month for iCloud.

iCloud Drive search works fine and having it on my iPhone, iPad, and Mac is very convenient when accessing my files.

I don’t like that iCloud maxes out at 2TB unless you resort to various workarounds.

It’s almost time for my OneDrive subscription to renew and I thought I would cancel it but after having some issues on my Mac where I was afraid I would delete my entire iCloud Drive contents, I’m leaning towards keeping the OneDrive subscription. I’m thinking to just use it as a backup source and continue to use iCloud as my main storage provider.

I also make heavy use of Google Drive (paid as well) but that’s mostly used for specific purposes. I also have external USB sticks and a T7 Shield SSD that is storing important files but I enjoy the convenience of cloud storage.

Overall, I enjoy iCloud Drive and find it worth paying for. It’s not without flaws though and I don’t recommend putting all your valuable eggs in the iCloud basket.

Thanks for the detailed breakdown. Much appreciated…
 
I switched from Dropbox. It's great for the most part, but there are few important caveats:
  • iCloud+ is limited to 4TB, which requires subscribing to both Apple One Premier and iCloud+ 2TB. Dropbox too, is typically limited to 2TB ($9.99/month) or 3TB ($16.58/mont). But if you are sharing Dropbox with 3 users or more, you can get 5TB ($15/user/month) or unlimited ($24/user/month).
  • iCloud syncs much slower than Dropbox.
  • No versioning, although macOS does have versioning, courtesy of AFS (but not backed up to the cloud).
  • No control over which files or folders can be made offline.
  • With the optimized storage feature turned on, no control over which files or folders can be made local.
  • File size limited to 50GB.
 
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I switched from Dropbox. It's great for the most part, but there are few important caveats:
  • iCloud+ is limited to 4TB, which requires subscribing to both Apple One Premier and iCloud+ 2TB. Dropbox too, is typically limited to 2TB ($9.99/month) or 3TB ($16.58/mont). But if you are sharing Dropbox with 3 users or more, you can get 5TB ($15/user/month) or unlimited ($24/user/month).
  • iCloud syncs much slower than Dropbox.
  • No versioning, although macOS does have versioning, courtesy of AFS (but not backed up to the cloud).
  • No control over which files or folders can be made offline.
  • With the optimized storage feature turned on, no control over which files or folders can be made local.
  • File size limited to 50GB.
Ah, thanks for sharing the info about the versioning. I did not even think about that...!
 
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