Dangers of iCloud desktop sync? Anyone else?

[mderb]

Hi all, I'm posting this as a precaution. My wife recently updated her Macbook. We had everything migrated, and set-up, at least we thought. I went to clean up the old computer to prepare for resale. Neither of us had any idea that iCloud was syncing/storing the desktop files to the cloud. (For the record, I think this is a bad idea - read on). I deleted all desktop files and then deleted the Trash before I had signed her out of iTunes and iCloud, having no idea that this would delete all of her desktop files on the new computer. GONE. I talked with Apple Support, a local Apple repair shop, and the two online data recovery companies that Apple mentioned (Drive Savers and OnTrack) and they said their was virtually no likelihood of retrieving them. Even the iCloud "recently deleted files" on the Drive didn't show that they had been recently deleted? How could one be expected to know this feature was added and that it was selected in the iCloud features? My wife doesn't recall setting it up. I checked my computer and sure enough, mine was set to Sync desktop too. And, get this... the rep at Drive Savers said, "believe it or not, this happened to me too, and I lost it all". Apple needs a better way of advising their customers of these risks. This was not mentioned in the Apple article that I read about preparing a computer for resale.

 

[0128672]

I can understand how frustrating this may have seemed, and it's always difficult to lose documents and data. In this Apple support article about how to prepare your Mac for sale, the first step is to back up everything. It sounds like that step might have been skipped. It's water under the bridge at this point, but I'm trying to understand how you migrated the Documents folder to the new computer prior to deleting it from the old computer.

What to do before you sell, give away, trade in, or recycle your Mac - Apple Support

Reset your Mac to factory settings to prepare it for a new owner.

support.apple.com

If using an external drive for backups isn't something you've been doing, this might be a good time to look into it. You can use the built-in Time Machine backup utility to backup automatically to that drive. If a restore is needed, you can restore a single document or everything you backed up. You can learn more about Time Machine reading some Apple support articles, such as this one:

Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support

If you have a USB drive or other external storage device, you can use Time Machine to automatically back up your files, including apps, music, photos, email, and documents.

support.apple.com

For drives, take a look at some of the portable drives offered on Apple.com.