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I have a MacBook Pro (early 2011) with a 320 GB hard disk, and I have a 200 GB storage plan on iCloud. The problem is that I cannot simply copy the Applications folder to iCloud Drive and restore it later in the event that I lose all of the disk storage. I would like to save all the operating system files, the applications and almost everything on the disk (I need about 150 GB for that).

The problem is that Time Machine asks me for a disk to save the data on. If I have a fast connection I think it's not totally worthless to save the entire disk to iCloud, but does Time Machine support this and if yes, how?

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  • Not the answer to the question you asked, but I'd investigate something like Backblaze [my personal choice] or Crash Plan, etc.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Apr 23, 2015 at 19:41
  • @TamásSengel - I've been with them since they first launched. No issues.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Mar 11, 2023 at 8:00
  • @Tetsujin reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/109kd3j/…
    – ㅤㅤㅤ
    Commented Mar 11, 2023 at 8:34
  • @TamásSengel - again, I've been with them since they first launched. No issues, even on large downloads. Anyway, I'm not quite sure why you seem to find it necessary to ping me repeatedly about this, on an 8-year-old comment. I'm just not that interested.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Mar 11, 2023 at 8:55
  • The OP on that thread took an ill-advised approach, with no prior research, trying to save a bit of money. btw, the threading on Mac downloads is just fine. If I needed all my 14TB back [which would only be necessary if the building burned down, as I have everything back onsite anyway] then I'd just buy a 16TB HD to transport it. Job done.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Mar 11, 2023 at 8:57

2 Answers 2

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Unfortunately, Time Machine doesn't support this feature and there are a couple of reasons why.

  • Time Machine makes physical backups of all your files, not just links to them. If it backed up to iCloud Drive (which syncs to your Mac), it would duplicate 150GB on to your HDD. It would then try to back all of that up too (unless you exclude that location from the backup) so it would try to add another 150GB to the backup, and so on.
  • Time Machine makes incremental backups. Sure, your backup is just 150GB now. But you change a few files and it backs up an additional 25MB. You install a new app and it adds another 2GB. While you may keep your actual drive below 320GB, your Time Machine backup could end up over 1TB in size! In my case, I use about 400GB of storage on my Mac, but my Time Machine backup is over 1.3TB due to deleted files.

Having said all that, sure, theoretically it is possible. If you created a link to a folder on your iCloud Drive in /Volumes/ it should show up as a disk to back up to, and if you excluded backing up iCloud Drive through Time Machine it wouldn't double in size every backup. Your hard drive would fill up very very quickly though, and your performance would suffer. To me, at least, this seems a lot more effort than it is worth.

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    If you were to go for the 1TB iCloud drive I don't see an issue if your MacBook has a smaller drive. Using an external drive, Time Machine just removes older backups once the external gets full, I would imagine the same would happen with iCloud drive. And of course it should exclude backing up itself, that would just be dumb. The main issue I could see is how long it would take to navigate through compared to a USB/Thunderbolt connection.
    – CJT3
    Commented Apr 23, 2015 at 16:58
  • @Ramy has a 320GB HDD. His backup is ~150GB. That's 300GB sitting on his disk already, leaving only 20GB free space (effectively, since a formatted 320GB HDD only has ~316GB). If he has 8GB RAM, thats only 8GB free because of the sleep image. The navigation time is a moot point since the actual backup you would be browsing through is stored locally on the hard disk.
    – Sera H
    Commented Apr 23, 2015 at 17:39
  • But not all of a 1TB iCloud Drive could be stored locally...
    – CJT3
    Commented Apr 23, 2015 at 17:40
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    What is on iCloud Drive is mirrored EXACTLY on your Mac. Currently, there is no way to selectively sync what gets pulled from iCloud (the exception being Apps that support iCloud Drive, but Time Machine is not one). iCloud would attempt to mirror as much information as possible from iCloud Drive on to the Mac until it ran out of space, at which point OS X would warn you that disk space is running low.
    – Sera H
    Commented Apr 23, 2015 at 17:47
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    I think that the confusion here is created by iCloud Drive and iCloud itself, that are two different things -- You can backup your iPhones, iPads and Apple Watches and you'll never see those files on your iCloud Drive, even tough they count towards your total available space on iCloud. I believe that it is possible to Apple introduce a backup system to paranoid people like me where you upgrade to a large iCloud plan and throw your Time Machine there (I don't trust physical drives, I had bad times with them before). Costly? Maybe. However, I'd pay for that.
    – Vinicius Tavares
    Commented Jan 3, 2017 at 5:14
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Apple will add this feature surely soon, as 512GB isn't a lot with fibre.

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