Help with iCloud Drive

[colodane]

I've never used iCloud drive, and thought I would try it. Might have been a mistake, as I really do not need it and something strange is happening.

I do not have iCloud drive activated yet on either my iPad or iPod. Thought I would turn it on on my iMac to see how it behaved. I really only had a couple of files that I wanted to experiment with - don't really need all my files on the iCloud Drive.

On my iMac, I went to iCloud Preferences and clicked the box for iCloud Drive. I have been using iCloud for syncing and backing up Calendar, Notes, etc. and that part works well. When I clicked the iCloud Drive box, a little circle started spinning and it said "setting up". But the spinning has been going on for several hours now with no progress. Nothing else is happening. My total iMac file library is small (very few photos and no videos) and I have a very high speed internet connection, so there is no reason for the spinning to go on for so long.

I then went into iCloud via a web browser to see if there was any activity there. Basically just the 1.6 GB of usage that I typically have for backup, notes, etc. No sign of any files or access to files associated with iCloud Drive. The iCloud Drive icon is there, but if I click in it all that shows up is a small test file from Numbers in 2013. Nothing that I really use on my iMac.

I'm ready to give up this experiment, since I really do not need the iCloud Drive Capability. I would just like my iMac back the way it was.
So I went back to the iCloud Preferences on my iMac with the intent to stop the setting up or turn off iCloud Drive. But there is no obvious way to cancel the setup, and I could not "uncheck" the iCloud Drive box with the "setting up" thing spinning.

Then I thought I would just sign out of iCloud on my iMac and then sign back on again - hoping that would abort the iCloud drive setting up and get my system back to normal. But if I click on the "sign out" button for iCloud I get a very ominous warning message that says:

"If you turn off iCloud drive, all documents stored in iCloud will be deleted from this Mac"

So I am afraid to turn it off. I most certainly do not want to loose any of the files on my iMac! Had I known it behaved this way I would not have even tried it.

My question is: how do I proceed? My two goals are:
1) Keep all the files on my iMac intact
2) End up with iCloud Drive turned OFF.

Any help will be appreciated. Thanks !

 

[chscag]

If you have no documents stored in iCloud, then turn it off. Make sure you check the iCloud drive and for safety sake, make a backup first. Use either Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to make a backup; that way you can always recover if something goes wrong. BTW, you do realize that if you store all your documents to iCloud that you'll likely have to buy more space since you're only allocated 5 GB for free?

 

[colodane]

Thanks, chscag, for the info.

This morning, the "setting up" circle is still spinning and there are still no actual files transferred to iCloud Drive when I look at it via a web browser at iCloud.com. So same as yesterday.

Based on your comments, I started to try to sign out of iCloud temporarily to see if this would stop the spinning circle and allow me to uncheck the iCloud Drive option box when I signed back in. I went past the first step that told me I would lose any files on iCloud Drive on my iMac. (there are none). The next step asked me if I wanted to keep my Contacts info on my iMac. Of course I selected YES for this. Then it told me I would loose all my Calendar info on my iMac if I continued. I chickened out at this point and aborted the sign out for iCloud. I assume that there will be later warnings about losing Safari, Notes, etc. info on my iMac also.

There are two things I don't understand.

Why is the "setting up" circle spinning after almost 24 hours? It seems to be hung up for some reason.

Why isn't there any option to just stop using iCloud Drive? The only option seems to be to to quit all of iCloud (and loose some of the info on my iMac in the process).

Since my iMac is still operating normally now except for the spinning "setting up" circle, I'm being cautious about proceeding further until I understand my options more clearly. Does anyone else have experience with this? Any other ideas as to what I should or shouldn't do in this situation?

Thanks!

 

[colodane]

Things are looking up and I believe that there is no longer any major issue. Did some web searching, and there were many reports of this problem back around 2014. Tried some of the posted solutions. None of them worked, but in the process I stumbled on something simpler that resolved the spinning "Setting up" wheel: I just exited iCloud preferences in System Preferences and then went back into it - the spinning wheel went away.

I then explored using iCloud Drive just on the few text type files that I want to be portable. It worked fine, with sharing between my iMac, iPad and iPod. A few minor usability items I need to figure out, but that is just fine tuning - no major issues. And all of my files resident on the iMac seem to be in their proper place and secure.

Because of my modest usage of the iCloud Drive, the 5 GB free limit should be more than adequate.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Mike Boreham]

Sounds like your experiment with iCloud Drive might have unfortunately coincided with this situation:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/widespread-system-issues-at-apple.2034861/

 

[colodane]

Sounds like your experiment with iCloud Drive might have unfortunately coincided with this situation:

Yes, I think you may be right. It was around the same timeframe when I couldn't get it to work. Since it was my first time trying to use it, I thought that perhaps I was doing something wrong.

I went back to it yesterday, and now it seems to be normal. The few files I uploaded to iCloud now show up in the iCloud Drive folder in Finder on my iMac. They were not there before. I can now also upload files directly from the iMac Finder rather than needing to connect to iCloud with a web browser. So I think it is fixed and I can continue to explore how I may want to utilize it.

Thanks for your help!