iCloud Drive: Slow (Or just me?)

[1ONE]

Okay so finally Apple introduced true cloud "storage" and I was very excited. Recently, I have gotten time to finally start organizing our family photos into folders, sorted by year and renamed using the very handy Yosemite tool that aids that task.

Now I'm ready to upload them to a cloud for "storage" and that's where I have come to a complete stop. Under the iCloud Drive section of iCloud I created a special folder called 'Photos' and under that started uploading zip files from each year.

I noticed immediately that our internet connection slowed to a crawl. We have 50/5 so it's not like we have a slow connection. What gives? I want to use iCloud Drive and keep everything within the Apple ecosphere but if this is "normal" I might have to look at Dropbox, Copy or one of the other cloud services.

Is this normal behavior?

 

[Bending Pixels]

It's not you, and...it's not Apple.

The biggest myth about cloud storage is that it's as fast to upload via the internet as it would be to copy to an external HD. The reality is that, uploading large files to the cloud takes lots of time and sucks bandwidth like a vacuum. How fast stuff uploads to any cloud account depends upon your internet speed, the speed of the servers it's going to, and how many others are accessing those servers simultaneously.

I keep very little in my iCloud account. Everything is backed up to mirrored external HD's.

 

[randolorian]

Anytime you saturate your upload bandwidth (5mbps in your case), other internet activities will feel slow. You'll likely notice the same slowdown when uploading big files to other cloud services. But at least Dropbox, and maybe others, allow you to limit upload bandwidth to a point below full saturation.

 

[1ONE]

Thanks for the info. I have modified my method of uploading to the iCloud Drive folders. No longer doing .zip files and instead doing groups of several hundred photos at a time into specific folders.

That seems to have greatly reduced the bandwidth impact I was experiencing.

Best regards

 

[simonsi]

Thanks for the info. I have modified my method of uploading to the iCloud Drive folders. No longer doing .zip files and instead doing groups of several hundred photos at a time into specific folders.

That seems to have greatly reduced the bandwidth impact I was experiencing.

Best regards

Data format doesn't matter, when you max your upload bandwidth you severely impact the download speed on the same line. That is inherent in the current technology.