iCloud vs. Local Drive

[oeagleo]

Can anyone explain to me in 3rd grader terms the relationship between my iCloud drive, and the local drive? It appears that the iCloud drive is a mirror of my local drive, but if I delete something on the iCloud drive it is also deleted on the local drive. Is this correct?
I'm asking because I am down to 30 gigs free space on the local drive, but it also appears that the contents of the iCloud drive are also taking space on the local drive. Why is this? If I take the space that is being shown on the local drive as iCloud data, then I'd have plenty of room.
Thanks in advance

 

[Weaselboy]

It works as you described... it syncs anything in the ~/Documents folder to iCloud drive.

There is a setting however that alters that somewhat. If you enable Optimize Mac Storage in the AppleID iCloud settings it will move older documents up to iCloud and remove them from the local drive to free up space.

I do not have this turned on because it scares me to have a document only on iCloud servers with no local copy.

 

[Blue Quark]

I turned off iCloud storage (or whatever it is called) a while ago because I wanted all my stuff to be strictly locally stored.

Anything I create on my MBA of importance I back up anyhow, so I don't really see the point. I also don't like my stuff being stored (with some exceptions) anywhere but my own personally-owned hardware.

 

[Apple_Robert]

I turned off iCloud storage (or whatever it is called) a while ago because I wanted all my stuff to be strictly locally stored.

Anything I create on my MBA of importance I back up anyhow, so I don't really see the point. I also don't like my stuff being stored (with some exceptions) anywhere but my own personally-owned hardware.

Encrypt data sent to the cloud and you are more secure than local storage, as to possible theft, failure, or damage to file(s). I think it is wise to back up in several places.

 

[James_C]

The primary purpose of iCloud drive is a file syncing service to other Apple devices, such as another Mac, iPhone or iPad. It is not an cloud based external drive where all your files can live independently from your Mac, nor is it a backup service as any changes made to a file are synced through to the iCloud ( however it is possible to get to a prior version on the web interface of iCloud).

It can be confusing as there are ways to have files stored only in the cloud, but you have little control over them. This is the optimise your Mac option shown above by @Weaselboy. I completely agree with him that I would not trust having that file only in iCloud.

If you don’t need the document syncing features of iCloud, it is probably not worth using.

 

[oeagleo]

I have checked the Optimize your Mac section, and I do have it checked. What I need to do is I have one "folder" showing in the iCloud Drive, "Documents" that is around 250 Gigs. This is half of the drive space on this laptop. I need to move it completely off the local drive and have it only stored on the iCloud Drive. Is this even possible? I have tried the various settings in the settings, and it "says" it's moved the Documents and Desktop folders to the cloud, but they're still taking up space on the drive.
Am I going to have to move everything to a completely separate drive like Google drive to be able to do this? I am not in the "documents" folder very often, only when I want to consult a manual for the fridge, or something, so it's not imperative that I have them stored locally, just so I know where to find the material.

UPDATE: I have just found a folder on the local drive named "iCloud Drive (archive)". This folder is HUGE, if this is an archive, and it's on the local drive, can I delete it?

 

[Weaselboy]

I have just found a folder on the local drive named "iCloud Drive (archive)". This folder is HUGE, if this is an archive, and it's on the local drive, can I delete it?

That is from some point you turned off iCloud Drive and it asked if you wanted to save a local copy of your data, and you apparently said yes. So as long as you are sure you have all your data in the regular iCloud Drive folder and the archive is just a copy, you can delete it.

If you have Optimize turned on it should automatically move files off the local drive if it sees you need more space.

 

[oeagleo]

Thank you! I have now recovered 260G of my 512G drive.. Crisis averted!