System Taking up 448GB after iCloud Transfer

[LarryJoe33]

My system used to take up 100GB. I recently tried to copy about 350GB to my iCloud Drive. I understand it has to pass through my computer before uploading to the cloud.

I deleted the 350GB from iCloud and now have my system taking up 448GB (nothing purgable). I have tried turning optimize storage on and off, rebooting, going into icloud from a PC and deleting the folder with the large files. Trash is emply too.

Does this ring a bell to anyone on how to fix this? Thanks in advance.
[doublepost=1508792683][/doublepost]EDIT: If I turn optimize on I get this:

 

[dianeoforegon]

If I turn optimize on I get this:
View attachment 726895

Click on Manage. It will show more details.

I don't believe you can select to store items in iCloud Drive and not on the Mac like you can with DropBox. I could be wrong since I don't use iCloud drive myself.

 

[gmanist1000]

I suffer this issue every day. iCloud Drive is horrible on the Mac.

I have 1.2 TB stored in iCloud, and I have optimize storage turned on. For some reason, iCloud thinks I want almost all of my 500GB SSD filled up with the files. Some of my files haven’t been used in months but they are never purged. You can’t choose to move files to the cloud so you have to wait for iCloud to do it automatically, but it never does the files I want. If I try and download files I actually need from iCloud Drive, it says my storage is full. WTH is optimize storage supposed to do? It should free that space so I can download the file!

It’s been such a pain the the A that I am debating removing iCloud Drive from my Mac and using the iCloud.com interface so I can get my storage back.

 

[LarryJoe33]

I suffer this issue every day. iCloud Drive is horrible on the Mac.

I have 1.2 TB stored in iCloud, and I have optimize storage turned on. For some reason, iCloud thinks I want almost all of my 500GB SSD filled up with the files. Some of my files haven’t been used in months but they are never purged. You can’t choose to move files to the cloud so you have to wait for iCloud to do it automatically, but it never does the files I want. If I try and download files I actually need from iCloud Drive, it says my storage is full. WTH is optimize storage supposed to do? It should free that space so I can download the file!

It’s been such a pain the the A that I am debating removing iCloud Drive from my Mac and using the iCloud.com interface so I can get my storage back.

Ugh. This sucks. I just cancelled my Prime storage and upgraded my iCloud plan thinking I could use iCloud. Question, what if I got my data to iCloud but not via my MBP? Would my MBP still try to pull it down?

 

[gmanist1000]

Ugh. This sucks. I just cancelled my Prime storage and upgraded my iCloud plan thinking I could use iCloud. Question, what if I got my data to iCloud but not via my MBP? Would my MBP still try to pull it down?

I think it would but I’m not positive. You can test it by adding a small file through iCloud.com and see if you Mac auto-downloads it.

 

[LarryJoe33]

I think it would but I’m not positive. You can test it by adding a small file through iCloud.com and see if you Mac auto-downloads it.

I'll give it a shot tomorrow. In the middle of restoring a CCC image because of this. Even after I deleted the 350GB I uploaded that was eating my SSD, the storage changed from iCloud to system.

 

[GuilleA]

So, just to make this clear. You uploaded 350GB to iCloud, I assume you have the 2TB storage plan, correct?
Did the upload succeeded? Where all the files actually uploaded?
If you do ls ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs from Terminal, can you see your files? Do you see exactly the same as you do with Finder?

 

[LarryJoe33]

So, just to make this clear. You uploaded 350GB to iCloud, I assume you have the 2TB storage plan, correct?
Did the upload succeeded? Where all the files actually uploaded?
If you do ls ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs from Terminal, can you see your files? Do you see exactly the same as you do with Finder?

I will do my best to describe. I had about 700GB of data stored on an external drive (time capsule) and I also had the same data stored on Amazon Drive. I have had it on my list for a while now to find a better solution than Amazon. I use Amazon to host it so I can "family share" the content (video and pictures) with my kids. Amazon is glitchy.

I was waiting for High Sierra/iOS11 to become final and utilize the share with people functionality of iCloud Drive introduced with these releases.

So, I upgraded from 200GB to 2TB on iCloud, I began the transfer from the Time Capsule of 700GB to my MBP iCloud Drive. I had about 350GB free on my MBP internal SSD. As the transfer got to around 350GB, I could see my SSD was reaching capacity and it seemed the transfer paused while upload to iCloud started. However, space was not being returned to my SDD with the upload. It became clear to me that I was mistaken on how iCloud Drive works.

I tried turning Optimize on and off. In the end, I had a giant "system" file storage space bar. I could not get rid of it. I gave up, restored from a Clone and today is another day of trying to find a solution.

To make matters worse, I blew away the Amazon data and I have 2TB of iCloud space I won't use because it ends up on my MBP.

 

[GuilleA]

Yeah, it sucks that iCloud Drive is an all-or-nothing affair. It is not a file dumping ground, it's a sync-everything-with-every-device sort of thing.
Optimize Storage does not involve iCloud at all, it simply deletes stuff from iTunes that you've already watched.
Store in iCloud however, does move your Desktop and Documents folders to iCloud Drive. When you enable this, your current Desktop and Documents folders in you user account directory are moved to the Mobile Documents container. It also uploads everything in those folders to iCloud Drive, you have no control.

 

[richard13]

Yeah, it sucks that iCloud Drive is an all-or-nothing affair. It is not a file dumping ground, it's a sync-everything-with-every-device sort of thing.
Optimize Storage does not involve iCloud at all, it simply deletes stuff from iTunes that you've already watched.
Store in iCloud however, does move your Desktop and Documents folders to iCloud Drive. When you enable this, your current Desktop and Documents folders in you user account directory are moved to the Mobile Documents container. It also uploads everything in those folders to iCloud Drive, you have no control.

I agree that this could be implemented better by Apple. I tried "Desktop and Documents Folders" for about a week and didn't care for the "all or none" way it handled things. Also, found several files that never synced. Seemed buggy.

I'm confused by what you say about Optimize Storage though



Why do you think this doesn't have to do with iCloud? Why would you think this is part of iTunes?

 

[GuilleA]

I agree that this could be implemented better by Apple. I tried "Desktop and Documents Folders" for about a week and didn't care for the "all or none" way it handled things. Also, found several files that never synced. Seemed buggy.

I'm confused by what you say about Optimize Storage though



Why do you think this doesn't have to do with iCloud? Why would you think this is part of iTunes?

My mistake. I was thinking about this.

 

[richard13]

My mistake. I was thinking about this.

LOL... Looks like Apple is reusing terms. No worries. I figured it had to be something like this. Cheers.

 

[LarryJoe33]

Just to be clear, I put these files in different folders than desktop and documents. Anything put under iCloud Drive is stored locally and in iCloud.

 

[Weaselboy]

Does this ring a bell to anyone on how to fix this?

I think what might be going on is this pace is being used by Time Machine's local snapshots.

See my earlier post here for a possible solution.

 

[LarryJoe33]

I think what might be going on is this pace is being used by Time Machine's local snapshots.

See my earlier post here for a possible solution.

Thanks. My drive was running at a consistent 110-130GB footprint until I decided to copy 700GB to iCloud via my MBP. It is possible that TM tried to take a snapshot of them on their way to the iCloud.

Unless someone has a workaround to make iCloud work as a storage resource and not a syn-only resource, I am back to Amazon. At least I can choose to sync or not with Amazon.

 

[Weaselboy]

Thanks. My drive was running at a consistent 110-130GB footprint until I decided to copy 700GB to iCloud via my MBP. It is possible that TM tried to take a snapshot of them on their way to the iCloud.

Unless someone has a workaround to make iCloud work as a storage resource and not a syn-only resource, I am back to Amazon. At least I can choose to sync or not with Amazon.

It is not so much a snapshot on the way to iCloud, but the system snapshots keep things you deleted. So if you moved say 300GB onto the machine to move to iCloud, then deleted it, that would get saved as a snapshot.

Try those commands in that post and let us know how it goes.

 

[LarryJoe33]

It is not so much a snapshot on the way to iCloud, but the system snapshots keep things you deleted. So if you moved say 300GB onto the machine to move to iCloud, then deleted it, that would get saved as a snapshit.

Try those commands in that post and let us know how it goes.

Gotchya, thank you.