iCloud Drive taking up local hard drive space

[James L]

Hello all,

New to iCloud Drive, which was configured with the intention of using it as a cloud backup solution for specific files.

I noticed whenever I copy a file to iCloud Drive it also reduces my available local Hard Drive space by the file size of the file.... i.e., it is making a local copy on my hard drive each time it uploads something up to the cloud.

Is there a way to negate this behaviour?

 

[fronesis]

Hello all,

New to iCloud Drive, which was configured with the intention of using it as a cloud backup solution for specific files.

I noticed whenever I copy a file to iCloud Drive it also reduces my available local Hard Drive space by the file size of the file.... i.e., it is making a local copy on my hard drive each time it uploads something up to the cloud.

Is there a way to negate this behaviour?

No, this is how iCloud works. Whatever is on your iCloud drive is also on your hard drive. iCloud Drive is a (still problematic) implementation of a dropbox-like sync system. This is also just what would happen if you *copied* a file from one location on your hard drive to either dropbox or google drive.

You can still backup files on your hard drive to the could by simply *moving* them (not copying them) to iCloud drive.

If you want to move files permanently to the cloud and remove them from your HD entirely, then you'll need a backup cloud service. I know box allows this.