iCloud as a do-everything solution?

[exi]

Currently using iCloud for mail, contacts, calendar, reminders, notes. Basically, everything except iCloud Drive.

Have been thinking about a way to utilize iCloud Drive. I pay for 50 GB monthly -- more than enough for documents. Already using iCloud Photo Library. Have not ponied up for music in iCloud because I'm worried about it ruining a meticulously groomed 10,000+ item library.

I used to use Dropbox with symbolic links to synchronize only select folders. I am very particular with filesystem organization on my laptop, and for me to keep everything in the same folder which I like to keep in the same folder, I don't know that there's an easy way to do that without simply uploading the entire parent folder to iCloud.

If I did that, files that are particularly sensitive, like those that include financial information and various other things you wouldn't ordinarily put iCloud storage, would be uploaded. Other then creating a encrypted disk image and using that to store those files, I'm not sure how else I could go about keeping things organized and using iCloud for everything.

All that being said, has anybody gone to iCloud for basically all of their documents, and if so, how did you get around this sort of thing?

 

[Tech198]

convenient as it may be, what happens when u can't access it ? I would never store personal files in the cloud under any circumstances. That's just me...

 

[Rigby]

I used to use Dropbox with symbolic links to synchronize only select folders. I am very particular with filesystem organization on my laptop, and for me to keep everything in the same folder which I like to keep in the same folder, I don't know that there's an easy way to do that without simply uploading the entire parent folder to iCloud.

What exactly is your goal? Accessibility on multiple devices? Backup?

If I did that, files that are particularly sensitive, like those that include financial information and various other things you wouldn't ordinarily put iCloud storage, would be uploaded. Other then creating a encrypted disk image and using that to store those files, I'm not sure how else I could go about keeping things organized and using iCloud for everything.

I would never, ever upload anything remotely sensitive to a cloud service without encrypting it myself. Thought that the "Fappening" was bad? Wait until your sensitive financial information is all over the Internet ...

The solution you mention works pretty well using e.g. Truecrypt containers. However, iCloud Drive is not a good cloud service for this because it cannot sync files in small blocks. If you only change a single byte in a Truecrypt container, it will upload the entire file again, and it's pretty slow on top. This works much better with Dropbox or Spideroak, which both upload only the parts of the file that have changed.