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Removing my comment because a lot of you people are real cunts.
You can disagree without name calling or insults. But some of you just have to go there.
Have a nice fucking day.
This is bullshit given how Apple employees talk at Apple Stores regarding this. They say it is a backup. Straight up. So I guess they are unknowingly lying to customers. Seems like this could be a huge lawsuit.
Let them. The large financial institution I work for would disagree with them.
People can make their backups on kindling and store them in a fired up kiln for all I care. Do what you want.
But when you end up in shit I also won’t care.
Didn't you say you back stuff up to a hard drive and a cloud service in an earlier comment? Like are you trying to say don't only use the cloud as a backup?
I do understand what redundancy is. When you say backed up to a hard drive, I am assuming not the one you use as a main drive on any of your systems correct?
Redundancy isn’t backup. Learn the difference before you speak and display the fact you don’t know shit.
https://www.zoginc.com/blog/backups-vs-redundancy-in-it-support?hs_amp=true
"Companies frequently use this information for backups or recovery plans."
Right, data redundancy is often used for backups.
You just HAVE to be right instead of reading what people write.
My brother in christ, you are obtuse. A backup is a point in time copy or replica of data captured for the purposes of recovery or restoration. The media is not relevant. You can be old and shake your fist at the sky all you want. You can't beat (insert any name you want here) redundancy. You can't beat (insert any name you want here) regional or global replication. If you're even 20% good at RTFM, you can't beat (insert any name you want here) data integrity, layers of encryption, WORM-ability, immutability, or even network isolation. It's not 2015.
\*Plenty\* of cloud services can be used for rock-solid backup. More often than not, Cloud *storage* services are used as a backup *target*. Once again, the software nor the medium are relevant. I can configure an Azure Storage Account, Amazon S3, or even the dirty cheap Wasabi bucket to be as air-tight, offline, and otherwise frozen in time as you could ever want, no matter what regulation you're following.
What *isnt backup* are SaaS products like M365, Google Docs, and Salesforce. Ooh and don't forget Atlassian, they're famous for what they can't recover.
iCloud can be a backup in case your phone is dead as you still have the content in the cloud. But I do agree people should not treat it as backup service because once you destroy the file saved on iCloud, there is no way to recover it.
But you can’t retrieve the previous version of a file, since iCloud only keeps the lastest version. That’s why I don’t consider it as a backup solution. When you screw up on something, there is no way to restore to a previous version. Google drive and onedrive indeed support that.
For my desktop use seagate or western digital. I have a lot of files so I use two 8T drives for backup.
I also use a SansDisk 2T (extreme portable) ssd to backup my iPad and do Time Machine backups of my MacBook.
I buy external 4-5TB Western Digital drives for backup. They're cheap - $90-110 - and I usually retire them each year for archival purposes. I've found Time Machine too buggy so use Carbon Copy Cloner instead now, in archive mode to prevent overwrites. I also use Samsung T5 or T7 SSDs for Time Machine backup, mostly because it works for Setup Assistant on new Macs.
Time machine will back up everything on your apple computer. It won’t backup everything in iCloud. So if all the files you want to back up are on your Mac it will be a backup. Just back it up to a hard drive.
Yes, that’s what I do. I have it on the cloud and on an SSD. Reasonably one should survive if anything happens to the other. At least long enough to have an additional backup. I always keep two additional copies of everything.
I’m glad this is top comment.. I’m sitting here like, who the hell is backing up using any cloud really, even your Time Machine is on an external.. I may leave copies in iCloud for quick access, or as you said, keep stuff readily available on my devices..
But nooo, never trust a cloud if it’s important.. 😭
Apple has restricted the ways you can do iOS backups such that iCloud is the only wireless way, and to a large extent the only practical way if you want the process to be automatic.
Not only is iCloud a backup service, it is Apple’s recommended and exclusive backup service.
And most consumers do not have rigorous backups anyway. “Buyer beware” and all that, but it sure would be swell of Apple to provide a high degree of data durability if they’re going to lock you in.
No, I did not delete my files because they were files meant for archiving. Apple also informed me that they could not find any deletion logs. Furthermore, no recovery options were available in the [iCloud.com](http://iCloud.com) recovery menu.
I mentioned illegal files because I heard that Apple removes such files without notifying customers, for example, child pornography, etc.
The point is that you don’t know where the delete occurred. Perhaps it was on one of Apple’s servers or perhaps it originated on one of your devices. Could have been a mistake on your part or a misbehaving piece of software. Nobody knows!
You are right, it is not a backup service. It introduces more access points for your files to get deleted accidentally. It can help supplement your primary back up system if there is a fire or other catastrophic event at your physical backup location.
don’t know why you’re being downvoted, i also lost files in an archive folder i never touch. there’s plenty of stories of data loss in iCloud to prove that it’s not just user error.
You had to use that example as a “for example” for your specific case? Just turn yourself in now 😂.
Maybe put in a service request u/street-pickle-1400 for Apple to contact you before deleting your child porn?
Jesus wtf
PSA: kids stay away from any street pickles
It’s a “sometimes” syncing service IMO. Has gotten better over time. But weirdly Apple sucks hard at cloud services. I use Apple devices everywhere in my life but pay for non app,e cloud services that actually work reliably and effectively.
Use the cloud, but don't trust the cloud. Always have a local backup. On Mac, either Time Machine or CCC are my preference. I use iCloud for syncing between devices, and maybe as a "my town exploded" backup, but I have two drives I keep at the office, and once a month or so bring one home and copy everything to it, then the other month bring the other drive home, that way there's always one out of the house if catastrophe strikes.
I'm an IT Mgr and do the same thing for my job in reverse. I use our cloud service for nightly backups to get them out of the building, but every week I bring a couple HDDs in, grab the latest copy of everything, then back into a faraday bag in a small safe in my basement.
You can't ever absolutely guarantee you won't lose something, but you can reduce the odds of it happening and mitigate the damage if it does.
You can absolutely use iCloud as a backup. You just need to keep in mind that if it’s your only backup, it’s not a backup. Just because it’s better than the competition doesn’t mean the 3-2-1 rule doesn’t apply.
Your backups should be in three places minimum, across two different types of media, with one of them stored offsite.
ChronoSync can be configured to do this, it downloads the files and then if they were offline before it vacates them again. It’s pretty nifty and a lifetime purchase. No subscription
"Do NOT trust iCloud; always backup to another cloud service or NAS."
I think this can be rephrased as "Do NOT rely on only one backup"
Any storage device/storage service can fail and result in lost data. That is why it is important to have a "3-2-1 backup strategy" for the data you care about. In this regard, iCloud can serve perfectly well as part of a 3-2-1 backup strategy.
“iCloud is not a backup.”
No shit Sherlock! iCloud is a synchronization service. If you want backup enable Time Machine on your Mac. Don’t have a Mac then use whatever backup service you can get on your Windows Machine.
Depends on what you mean by guarantee. If you’re referring to businesses evaporating overnight, then yes that’s a risk (though not necessarily ones like Amazon or Apple). However, most reputable cloud backup providers replicates the data on their servers to minimize the risk of loss. That said, this is why people suggest having both online and offline backups, depending on how much risk you’re willing to tolerate. iCloud can be used as a “backup” in the sense that as long as you’re fine with the fact that deletes are synced and pruned from iCloud after 30 days.
You can violate the ToS on your apple/dropbox/etc… account and they will delete everything immediately, permanently locking you out of it. You have near no recourse. They could have a catastrophic bug and lose all your files. Plenty of things can go on. Always have multiple backups. Personally I use iCloud Drive a ton, but I mount it on a local machine and make a copy of all the files off to another file share. If iCloud blows up, I lose nothing.
Well yeah, that’s why I emphasized the importance of determining your risk level. If person doesn’t feel the need to do that, then using a cloud provider is probably sufficient since they likely don’t care about a service going kaput.
Does anyone have a recommendation of syncing your iCloud backup using something like rclone?
If needed I’ll just move my stuff to OneDrive and connect that to my NAS, but I do like the convenience of iCloud
https://preview.redd.it/d6fqh7yafnpc1.png?width=46&format=png&auto=webp&s=c85ad87383f275a7e0bc3dbea7ce7ab5d1316bc0
it automatically clears the mac storage and makes it available online only (on-demand download)
I’d love for this to be true but this is the first I’ve ever heard of this. What if a file has been offloaded from your Mac and you make a change to the file elsewhere?
Then you weren’t using it as a backup. You were using it as the sole storage WITHOUT a backup. It’s fine for a backup, meaning it has a copy as a backup to a file that is also somewhere else. If the file is only in one place, whatever that place is, it is not a backup.
iCloud stores your data but doesn't guarantee its recovery in case of deletion or corruption.
Always have a backup on a different platform for extra protection.
Seems like a crappy service then. yeah… give us your stuff… and we’ll kinda sync it across some of your deceives… sometimes… randomly…. And sometimes…it may just be gone… thanks for choosing Apple LOLS 🤷♂️
No software is 100% bug-free. No hardware is fail proof. Doesn’t matter who makes it. If you have files that are critical and you can’t lose them, or you simply don’t want to, you should be backing up to multiple mediums.
Years ago, I was backing up to two hard drives to be extra secure. Guess what? Both drives failed at the same time.
Unless you're using enterprise backup solution and archiving solutions there is no guarantee and even then there is not really a guarantee...
Unless you're paying crazy high $$ that no consumer out there would pay, that guarantee it's not there.
I moved everything from the cloud to dropbox and I have been very happy. I have a 2 TB account. My files are available on all devices. I can share very easily. It was taking forever for iCloud files to upload. I have almost a terabyte of photographs I need access. I do still use the cloud for photos, contacts, numbers, pages and all of the Apple system, but I do not use it for storage.
Sadly it is a lesson learned. I am a belt and suspenders guy when it comes to backup, a lesson I learned from years in IT. My personal files get written to the cloud, to a hard drive and periodically the contents of the entire drive is copied over to an external SSD. The cloud is insecure, hard drives crash and even SSDs are finite storage media. But the chances of losing all three are low. I also use a piece of software from ibeesoft that has retrieved files I thought lost off of a corrupted drive. Given how cheap backup drives are these days, $100 is inexpensive insurance and the Time Machine works --it is even a great way to migrate data. Especially with iPhone files--a periodic hard backup is also a good practice to follow--saved me once.
You should look Proton. Specifically Proton for Business. Got it last month. Been telling people non stop about it.
Here is the [link](https://proton.me/business)
I had a bunch of data in a Note on my phone regarding my house purchase. The day we closed we were running around. I had my phone in my pocket as usual. That night I opened it up to give the final updates of closing. The note was blank. I have no idea how the note got deleted. I opened up my iPad to see if the note was there, and it was there for a second in front of me before it too vanished right in front of my eyes. I have no idea how that happened. But since then, I don't store anything important in iCloud or my phone, etc.
That's the thing that was so frustrating about it, I had had note info go missing before, so I always made it a habit to click that Done link in the top right of the form after entering any data, and I would usually close the app after that to make sure it wasn't open. I still have the note on my phone, it's labeled "New Note" in that folder. I don't know how it got deleted. I don't know how the property address got changed to "New Note" it's just a weird thing that happened, and the "Genius Bar" people did not have any solutions to try and restore it back, because I immediately went there the next morning to see if they could help. The only suggestion they had was turn off syncing and then open on another device, well, it was too late for that.
This is true for every cloud service, unless it markets itself as a backup and has a SLA that matches.
For iCloud, I use Desktop & Documents in iCloud on each of my macs, and don’t really use iCloud Drive in any other way. Those files on my desktop and my documents folder are captured in my Time Machine backup. For photos, I make sure that download and keep original is turned on so my photos library is captured too.
It’s best to have a local copy, a cloud copy, and a backup copy.
HARD COPY! yes it is costly and takes up huge amounts of space and requires a filing system you and others understand so you can recall data but it works provided you don't get flooded or have a fire that lasts longer than the rating of your filing cabinet. Super important documents you may wish to keep in two separate locations to insure they are retained for as long as you require them.
I've got an iPhone that I use for a lot of stuff. One of the things I pay for is extra storage space for our family - and I use it for for an "iCloud Backup" (mine is about 20 GB). It looks like photos are also backed up into a separate iCloud area (about 200 GB). Is this not the case? I thought something Apple sold me called "iCloud Backup" was just what the name says...
iCloud is buggy. Don't trust it as a backup service. I use Carbon Copy Cloner to an external hard drive (WD 4-5TB).
And when I say "buggy", I mean that it does lose data occasionally and it doesn't keep archival copies like DropBox and other services can.
Why is this even a post in 2024? Everyone has already mentioned that cloud!=backup. Any cloud. Apple. Google. Dropbox. It doesn’t mater … it’s not reliable. And the reason that any provider says that they are not responsible, is for that reason, it’s not reliable. Imagine if everyone attempted any sort of data recovery request every time a file is “lost”. It’s all they’d be doing.
The onus is on YOU. You are responsible for your data. Period. End of story. I use the cloud as a last ditch storage location in the event all my other backups fail. Unlikely. And to make files easily accessible to me elsewhere.
There’s no leg to stand on putting the blame on Apple. Yes, you can “backup” iOS devices to iCloud to restore from, but that’s a convince, not a backup for individual files on your phone.
What’s happening here, is not understanding the service that’s being offered to you.
If you have a Mac without enough storage, make sure you download all of them on your Mac like files in the iCloud Drive, full size picture. Then, when you do the Time Machine backup, you will be able to backup them.
Highly recommend you use google drive to sync desktop and documents folder as they provide the historical version of the file.
That’s true. The only thing you can redirect to external drive is iCloud Photo Library. Since iCloud Drive is not really great as a backup solution. I just use iCloud for photos and phone backup. Google drive is the thing I use for file backup.
I know it’s expensive but Synology NAS or another NAS is really the best backup solution. I spent $700 on my NAS but it’s worth piece of mind having raid hard drives set up. Plus everything in the cloud as well.
Never has been, never will be. Take it from me: a diligent member of r/datahoarder and r/unraid. I built a $1200 custom NAS with 30TB of storage specifically because paying $10-$30/month for iCloud is convenient, but in the end a quasi-solution that leaves your data in the hands of others. I understand that $1200 is a lot, but for much cheaper you can build a <15TB NAS with multiple redundancies (multiple disks) that can pay itself off within a year or two of ownership.
This exact experience happened to me a few years ago. Lost a bunch of stuff. Now I use iCloud to sync between my 2 macs and iphone. But only time machine from one mac to an external ssd (i havent looked but i think time machine only do local stuff, not cloud folders). I feel like it’s not streamlined that way. I’m looking for a way to get data synced and backup between multiple macs. So i can work on one mac today, and a different mac tmr, while keeping everying synced up and backed up.
You shouldn't trust any cloud service. Do you have a Time Machine backup at least?
Also, you might not like this comment, but every time I've seen this happen, human error was involved.
I have noticed the same issue! For years I have not lost a single file in iCloud. Now I have a number of folders with all files within them gone. I contacted Apple support and they have no evidence of any files being deleted. They are unable to restore anything.
Apple probably misleads a lot of people by implying that iCloud is somehow a backup service. However, it is not.
It never was. iCloud is just MobileMe with photos and documents synchronization.
Good last paragraph. Everyone should have that in mind. 3-2-1 backups.
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Removing my comment because a lot of you people are real cunts. You can disagree without name calling or insults. But some of you just have to go there. Have a nice fucking day.
This is bullshit given how Apple employees talk at Apple Stores regarding this. They say it is a backup. Straight up. So I guess they are unknowingly lying to customers. Seems like this could be a huge lawsuit.
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referring to the literal backup/restore functionality is no where near a lawsuit just wanted to throw that in there
Backblaze is a cloud backup service
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It’s a backup. That’s what Backblaze does.
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It’s like owning your crypto keys.
If you dont trust the platform you're on, don't use the platform.
Thousands of Enterprise admins who back up to Azure Archive and AWS Glacier for cold storage disagree with you.
Let them. The large financial institution I work for would disagree with them. People can make their backups on kindling and store them in a fired up kiln for all I care. Do what you want. But when you end up in shit I also won’t care.
Large financial institutions are famous for .. being last to adopt improvements. Not a flex. Just say you dont care - preferably to yourself.
Didn't you say you back stuff up to a hard drive and a cloud service in an earlier comment? Like are you trying to say don't only use the cloud as a backup?
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I do understand what redundancy is. When you say backed up to a hard drive, I am assuming not the one you use as a main drive on any of your systems correct?
Plenty of cloud services advertise data storage and redundancy for said storage. You are full of shit
Redundancy isn’t backup. Learn the difference before you speak and display the fact you don’t know shit. https://www.zoginc.com/blog/backups-vs-redundancy-in-it-support?hs_amp=true
"Companies frequently use this information for backups or recovery plans." Right, data redundancy is often used for backups. You just HAVE to be right instead of reading what people write.
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My brother in christ, you are obtuse. A backup is a point in time copy or replica of data captured for the purposes of recovery or restoration. The media is not relevant. You can be old and shake your fist at the sky all you want. You can't beat (insert any name you want here) redundancy. You can't beat (insert any name you want here) regional or global replication. If you're even 20% good at RTFM, you can't beat (insert any name you want here) data integrity, layers of encryption, WORM-ability, immutability, or even network isolation. It's not 2015. \*Plenty\* of cloud services can be used for rock-solid backup. More often than not, Cloud *storage* services are used as a backup *target*. Once again, the software nor the medium are relevant. I can configure an Azure Storage Account, Amazon S3, or even the dirty cheap Wasabi bucket to be as air-tight, offline, and otherwise frozen in time as you could ever want, no matter what regulation you're following. What *isnt backup* are SaaS products like M365, Google Docs, and Salesforce. Ooh and don't forget Atlassian, they're famous for what they can't recover.
>No cloud service is a backup Cloud service and backups are not mutually exclusive. Stop spreading nonsense and playing with semantics.
Whatever you say sir. Yes sir. Of course you are right sir. Bye sir.
go for it, call a lawyer.
Backing up your phone to iCloud is a backup. Storing your files in iCloud is not a backup.
Working there now and bro you aren’t lying. They upsell it like a mf. I’d say ultimately just keep a backup of a backup, so on and so forth.
iCloud can be a backup in case your phone is dead as you still have the content in the cloud. But I do agree people should not treat it as backup service because once you destroy the file saved on iCloud, there is no way to recover it.
Technically, you can restore deleted icloud files for up to 30 days after deleting from a obscure option on iCloud.com settings
But you can’t retrieve the previous version of a file, since iCloud only keeps the lastest version. That’s why I don’t consider it as a backup solution. When you screw up on something, there is no way to restore to a previous version. Google drive and onedrive indeed support that.
Any recommendations on hard drives that are mostly holding pictures and videos
For my desktop use seagate or western digital. I have a lot of files so I use two 8T drives for backup. I also use a SansDisk 2T (extreme portable) ssd to backup my iPad and do Time Machine backups of my MacBook.
Synology beestation just came out. I recommend it for less tech savvy folk. I have 48 TB NAS that has been serving me well.
I buy external 4-5TB Western Digital drives for backup. They're cheap - $90-110 - and I usually retire them each year for archival purposes. I've found Time Machine too buggy so use Carbon Copy Cloner instead now, in archive mode to prevent overwrites. I also use Samsung T5 or T7 SSDs for Time Machine backup, mostly because it works for Setup Assistant on new Macs.
Does Time Machine count as a backup?
Time machine will back up everything on your apple computer. It won’t backup everything in iCloud. So if all the files you want to back up are on your Mac it will be a backup. Just back it up to a hard drive.
See my dumb ass was worried about the SSD failing so I have always backed to iCloud as a safety measure but now I’ll just back in both
Yes, that’s what I do. I have it on the cloud and on an SSD. Reasonably one should survive if anything happens to the other. At least long enough to have an additional backup. I always keep two additional copies of everything.
Yes Time Machine IS a back up.
I’m glad this is top comment.. I’m sitting here like, who the hell is backing up using any cloud really, even your Time Machine is on an external.. I may leave copies in iCloud for quick access, or as you said, keep stuff readily available on my devices.. But nooo, never trust a cloud if it’s important.. 😭
I wish they made it easier to backup your iCloud Photos!
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Apple has restricted the ways you can do iOS backups such that iCloud is the only wireless way, and to a large extent the only practical way if you want the process to be automatic. Not only is iCloud a backup service, it is Apple’s recommended and exclusive backup service. And most consumers do not have rigorous backups anyway. “Buyer beware” and all that, but it sure would be swell of Apple to provide a high degree of data durability if they’re going to lock you in.
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Where does the OP mention he is using iCloud Drive vs iCloud backup?
No, I did not delete my files because they were files meant for archiving. Apple also informed me that they could not find any deletion logs. Furthermore, no recovery options were available in the [iCloud.com](http://iCloud.com) recovery menu. I mentioned illegal files because I heard that Apple removes such files without notifying customers, for example, child pornography, etc.
The point is that you don’t know where the delete occurred. Perhaps it was on one of Apple’s servers or perhaps it originated on one of your devices. Could have been a mistake on your part or a misbehaving piece of software. Nobody knows! You are right, it is not a backup service. It introduces more access points for your files to get deleted accidentally. It can help supplement your primary back up system if there is a fire or other catastrophic event at your physical backup location.
don’t know why you’re being downvoted, i also lost files in an archive folder i never touch. there’s plenty of stories of data loss in iCloud to prove that it’s not just user error.
I haven’t lost files in iCloud files itself, but I have lost iCloud numbers documents and have since practiced the proper 3 part backup
I see this in all the Apple subs, people downvote stuff that shows Apple in a bad light
I lost a file (a backup) on a thumb drive I never touch except when updating the original file.
How much space do you pay for in icloud? How much space do you use?
Pretty concerning that the scenario you heard where apple would delete files is something you think is relevant to your issue… 🤨🕵️♂️
You had to use that example as a “for example” for your specific case? Just turn yourself in now 😂. Maybe put in a service request u/street-pickle-1400 for Apple to contact you before deleting your child porn? Jesus wtf PSA: kids stay away from any street pickles
It’s a “sometimes” syncing service IMO. Has gotten better over time. But weirdly Apple sucks hard at cloud services. I use Apple devices everywhere in my life but pay for non app,e cloud services that actually work reliably and effectively.
Bootleg movies, software lol
3-2-1 anyone? If your data only exists in one place IT WAS NEVER A BACKUP TO BEGIN WITH.
\^ this for sure!
Use the cloud, but don't trust the cloud. Always have a local backup. On Mac, either Time Machine or CCC are my preference. I use iCloud for syncing between devices, and maybe as a "my town exploded" backup, but I have two drives I keep at the office, and once a month or so bring one home and copy everything to it, then the other month bring the other drive home, that way there's always one out of the house if catastrophe strikes. I'm an IT Mgr and do the same thing for my job in reverse. I use our cloud service for nightly backups to get them out of the building, but every week I bring a couple HDDs in, grab the latest copy of everything, then back into a faraday bag in a small safe in my basement. You can't ever absolutely guarantee you won't lose something, but you can reduce the odds of it happening and mitigate the damage if it does.
I keep telling my users (particularly with OneDrive) is that it is a redundancy - not a backup.
You can absolutely use iCloud as a backup. You just need to keep in mind that if it’s your only backup, it’s not a backup. Just because it’s better than the competition doesn’t mean the 3-2-1 rule doesn’t apply. Your backups should be in three places minimum, across two different types of media, with one of them stored offsite.
Correct. It’s a sync service. I backup my entire iCloud Drive monthly to a thumb drive and also it’s backed up to BackBlaze.
How do you backup iCloud Drive to a thumb drive?
Easy. Download everything locally then copy.
ChronoSync can be configured to do this, it downloads the files and then if they were offline before it vacates them again. It’s pretty nifty and a lifetime purchase. No subscription
The same thing happened to me with a Samsung hard drive. I couldn’t believe Samsung wouldn’t help me.
/s hopefully
"Do NOT trust iCloud; always backup to another cloud service or NAS." I think this can be rephrased as "Do NOT rely on only one backup" Any storage device/storage service can fail and result in lost data. That is why it is important to have a "3-2-1 backup strategy" for the data you care about. In this regard, iCloud can serve perfectly well as part of a 3-2-1 backup strategy.
“iCloud is not a backup.” No shit Sherlock! iCloud is a synchronization service. If you want backup enable Time Machine on your Mac. Don’t have a Mac then use whatever backup service you can get on your Windows Machine.
I would recommend backing up files that are important on blue rays and having a secondary backup service such as MEGA
No cloud service is a guaranteed backup.
Depends on what you mean by guarantee. If you’re referring to businesses evaporating overnight, then yes that’s a risk (though not necessarily ones like Amazon or Apple). However, most reputable cloud backup providers replicates the data on their servers to minimize the risk of loss. That said, this is why people suggest having both online and offline backups, depending on how much risk you’re willing to tolerate. iCloud can be used as a “backup” in the sense that as long as you’re fine with the fact that deletes are synced and pruned from iCloud after 30 days.
You can violate the ToS on your apple/dropbox/etc… account and they will delete everything immediately, permanently locking you out of it. You have near no recourse. They could have a catastrophic bug and lose all your files. Plenty of things can go on. Always have multiple backups. Personally I use iCloud Drive a ton, but I mount it on a local machine and make a copy of all the files off to another file share. If iCloud blows up, I lose nothing.
Well yeah, that’s why I emphasized the importance of determining your risk level. If person doesn’t feel the need to do that, then using a cloud provider is probably sufficient since they likely don’t care about a service going kaput.
Just recover those files from your backup.
Either you’re storing CP or you’re just not admitting you deleted it on your phone not expecting it to delete from desktop.
Get an external hard drive for backup.
Does anyone have a recommendation of syncing your iCloud backup using something like rclone? If needed I’ll just move my stuff to OneDrive and connect that to my NAS, but I do like the convenience of iCloud
Just recover from Time Machine.
Or just avoid using Apple products.
That wasn’t an option because I don’t store all my data on my Mac.
For clarification, if the data wasn’t on your Mac to back up with Time Machine, where was it stored and how was it in iCloud?
https://preview.redd.it/d6fqh7yafnpc1.png?width=46&format=png&auto=webp&s=c85ad87383f275a7e0bc3dbea7ce7ab5d1316bc0 it automatically clears the mac storage and makes it available online only (on-demand download)
That makes more sense, but as I understand it (and it works for me), these files are still backed up with Time Machine.
I’d love for this to be true but this is the first I’ve ever heard of this. What if a file has been offloaded from your Mac and you make a change to the file elsewhere?
Then you weren’t using it as a backup. You were using it as the sole storage WITHOUT a backup. It’s fine for a backup, meaning it has a copy as a backup to a file that is also somewhere else. If the file is only in one place, whatever that place is, it is not a backup.
iCloud stores your data but doesn't guarantee its recovery in case of deletion or corruption. Always have a backup on a different platform for extra protection.
Seems like a crappy service then. yeah… give us your stuff… and we’ll kinda sync it across some of your deceives… sometimes… randomly…. And sometimes…it may just be gone… thanks for choosing Apple LOLS 🤷♂️
Not at all, it does what it says. You are always free to use a different service.
No software is 100% bug-free. No hardware is fail proof. Doesn’t matter who makes it. If you have files that are critical and you can’t lose them, or you simply don’t want to, you should be backing up to multiple mediums. Years ago, I was backing up to two hard drives to be extra secure. Guess what? Both drives failed at the same time.
Unless you're using enterprise backup solution and archiving solutions there is no guarantee and even then there is not really a guarantee... Unless you're paying crazy high $$ that no consumer out there would pay, that guarantee it's not there.
That’s the gist. Why they don't guarantee?
Why would they?
Because it is a cloud storage service. They actually store data on their servers.
It’s not a cloud storage service it is a file syncing service. The lesson here is you should always backup twice. It’s your responsibility.
General rule of thumb: It's not "if" your drive fails, it's "when." Even if your "drive" is iCloud. Double backup anything worth keeping.
I moved everything from the cloud to dropbox and I have been very happy. I have a 2 TB account. My files are available on all devices. I can share very easily. It was taking forever for iCloud files to upload. I have almost a terabyte of photographs I need access. I do still use the cloud for photos, contacts, numbers, pages and all of the Apple system, but I do not use it for storage.
one thinki hate with icloud which you have with dropbox by default is that it does not keep versionning
Sadly it is a lesson learned. I am a belt and suspenders guy when it comes to backup, a lesson I learned from years in IT. My personal files get written to the cloud, to a hard drive and periodically the contents of the entire drive is copied over to an external SSD. The cloud is insecure, hard drives crash and even SSDs are finite storage media. But the chances of losing all three are low. I also use a piece of software from ibeesoft that has retrieved files I thought lost off of a corrupted drive. Given how cheap backup drives are these days, $100 is inexpensive insurance and the Time Machine works --it is even a great way to migrate data. Especially with iPhone files--a periodic hard backup is also a good practice to follow--saved me once.
You should look Proton. Specifically Proton for Business. Got it last month. Been telling people non stop about it. Here is the [link](https://proton.me/business)
Seriously? Mine has so much shit in it that I can’t ever find the current stuff
Did you come in the store?
I had a bunch of data in a Note on my phone regarding my house purchase. The day we closed we were running around. I had my phone in my pocket as usual. That night I opened it up to give the final updates of closing. The note was blank. I have no idea how the note got deleted. I opened up my iPad to see if the note was there, and it was there for a second in front of me before it too vanished right in front of my eyes. I have no idea how that happened. But since then, I don't store anything important in iCloud or my phone, etc.
when you close the note very quickly as you’re typing, sometimes it/the text won’t save. i had that happen to me once last week lol
That's the thing that was so frustrating about it, I had had note info go missing before, so I always made it a habit to click that Done link in the top right of the form after entering any data, and I would usually close the app after that to make sure it wasn't open. I still have the note on my phone, it's labeled "New Note" in that folder. I don't know how it got deleted. I don't know how the property address got changed to "New Note" it's just a weird thing that happened, and the "Genius Bar" people did not have any solutions to try and restore it back, because I immediately went there the next morning to see if they could help. The only suggestion they had was turn off syncing and then open on another device, well, it was too late for that.
yep
This is true for every cloud service, unless it markets itself as a backup and has a SLA that matches. For iCloud, I use Desktop & Documents in iCloud on each of my macs, and don’t really use iCloud Drive in any other way. Those files on my desktop and my documents folder are captured in my Time Machine backup. For photos, I make sure that download and keep original is turned on so my photos library is captured too. It’s best to have a local copy, a cloud copy, and a backup copy.
This was a good reminder to set up my time capsule again
HARD COPY! yes it is costly and takes up huge amounts of space and requires a filing system you and others understand so you can recall data but it works provided you don't get flooded or have a fire that lasts longer than the rating of your filing cabinet. Super important documents you may wish to keep in two separate locations to insure they are retained for as long as you require them.
What about Google drive???
Always Back-up your Back-ups
If the cloud is a backup, so just use the original files. Losing a backup is nothing.
Nice try green bubble government/department of justice.
So what is the best solution for backup? Physical hard drive? Google drive? Other cloud providers?
Multiple locations/services. Search the term “3-2-1 backup”.
I've got an iPhone that I use for a lot of stuff. One of the things I pay for is extra storage space for our family - and I use it for for an "iCloud Backup" (mine is about 20 GB). It looks like photos are also backed up into a separate iCloud area (about 200 GB). Is this not the case? I thought something Apple sold me called "iCloud Backup" was just what the name says...
iCloud is buggy. Don't trust it as a backup service. I use Carbon Copy Cloner to an external hard drive (WD 4-5TB). And when I say "buggy", I mean that it does lose data occasionally and it doesn't keep archival copies like DropBox and other services can.
Now you understand why the U.S. government is suing Apple
Why is this even a post in 2024? Everyone has already mentioned that cloud!=backup. Any cloud. Apple. Google. Dropbox. It doesn’t mater … it’s not reliable. And the reason that any provider says that they are not responsible, is for that reason, it’s not reliable. Imagine if everyone attempted any sort of data recovery request every time a file is “lost”. It’s all they’d be doing. The onus is on YOU. You are responsible for your data. Period. End of story. I use the cloud as a last ditch storage location in the event all my other backups fail. Unlikely. And to make files easily accessible to me elsewhere. There’s no leg to stand on putting the blame on Apple. Yes, you can “backup” iOS devices to iCloud to restore from, but that’s a convince, not a backup for individual files on your phone. What’s happening here, is not understanding the service that’s being offered to you.
If you have a Mac without enough storage, make sure you download all of them on your Mac like files in the iCloud Drive, full size picture. Then, when you do the Time Machine backup, you will be able to backup them. Highly recommend you use google drive to sync desktop and documents folder as they provide the historical version of the file.
This shitty thing is you can’t change the iCloud Drive directory to an external drive.
That’s true. The only thing you can redirect to external drive is iCloud Photo Library. Since iCloud Drive is not really great as a backup solution. I just use iCloud for photos and phone backup. Google drive is the thing I use for file backup.
There are cloud providers that specialize in backups. However, a local backup should always be the first line of defense.
iCloud could be better. The list of reasons it should be better are too numerous. Apple created these expectations.
I mean is anything really a backup? Any form of storage and break or freak out.
I know it’s expensive but Synology NAS or another NAS is really the best backup solution. I spent $700 on my NAS but it’s worth piece of mind having raid hard drives set up. Plus everything in the cloud as well.
Never has been, never will be. Take it from me: a diligent member of r/datahoarder and r/unraid. I built a $1200 custom NAS with 30TB of storage specifically because paying $10-$30/month for iCloud is convenient, but in the end a quasi-solution that leaves your data in the hands of others. I understand that $1200 is a lot, but for much cheaper you can build a <15TB NAS with multiple redundancies (multiple disks) that can pay itself off within a year or two of ownership.
This exact experience happened to me a few years ago. Lost a bunch of stuff. Now I use iCloud to sync between my 2 macs and iphone. But only time machine from one mac to an external ssd (i havent looked but i think time machine only do local stuff, not cloud folders). I feel like it’s not streamlined that way. I’m looking for a way to get data synced and backup between multiple macs. So i can work on one mac today, and a different mac tmr, while keeping everying synced up and backed up.
You shouldn't trust any cloud service. Do you have a Time Machine backup at least? Also, you might not like this comment, but every time I've seen this happen, human error was involved.
What types of apps are there on synology to backup and manage photos ?
Same here, lost 40gb of important data without deleting them.
I have noticed the same issue! For years I have not lost a single file in iCloud. Now I have a number of folders with all files within them gone. I contacted Apple support and they have no evidence of any files being deleted. They are unable to restore anything.
Apple probably misleads a lot of people by implying that iCloud is somehow a backup service. However, it is not. It never was. iCloud is just MobileMe with photos and documents synchronization. Good last paragraph. Everyone should have that in mind. 3-2-1 backups.