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I have 2 TB of space in iCloud, of which I have used less than 75 GB. I have some video data stored on a 256 GB SD card that I am trying to copy from the SD card to iCloud using my MacBook Air under Ventura 13.4.1 using an SD card adapter.

No matter what I do (Desktop and Finder, or command line) I keep on getting error messages like the following (e.g. when doing cp -R):

cp: /Volumes/Insta360/DCIM/Camera01//VID_20230801_153704_00_015.insv: No space left on device

df -m provides the following information:

Filesystem     1M-blocks   Used Available Capacity  iused   ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/disk3s5      233752 218627        21    100% 1834742  217200   89%   /System/Volumes/Data
/dev/disk4s1      243952 116461    127490     48%  465847  509961   48%   /Volumes/Insta360

It seems to me that cp -R is trying to copy the files to /System/Volumes/Data before sending them to iCloud, and /System/Volumes/Data appears to have run out of nodes.

I don't understand why this is, and I don't know how to get around it. Can anyone please tell me how to copy files directly from an external disk (specifically an SD card) to iCloud?

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  • According to that output, you're at 100% capacity. You need to free up some space on your Mac to copy that SD card over.
    – Allan
    Commented Aug 15, 2023 at 13:35
  • @Allan Yes, I realise that. But why, when I am copying from A to C, do I need to have free space on B (other than for temporary files)? Some files are transferred from the SD card before the Mac runs out of space: so how do I delete the unwanted files (presumably copies of the files from the SD) from the Mac? And, as a bonus question, why are the copies even created on the Mac?
    – Stephen Winnall
    Commented Aug 15, 2023 at 18:14
  • You're trying to sync your files when there's no room on your computer. Try uploading directly from the web browser interface.
    – Allan
    Commented Aug 15, 2023 at 18:27
  • @Allan Thank you. Using iCloud.com to copy the files from the SD card solved the problem. If you write that up as an answer, I'll award you the points.
    – Stephen Winnall
    Commented Aug 16, 2023 at 15:20

1 Answer 1

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I am trying to copy from the SD card to iCloud using my MacBook Air under Ventura 13.4.1 using an SD card adapter....It seems to me that cp -R is trying to copy the files to /System/Volumes/Data before sending them to iCloud, and /System/Volumes/Data appears to have run out of nodes.

The reason why this is happening is because you have, in fact, run out of space and by trying to synchronize the photos from the SD card to iCloud is that the Mac must act as an intermediary in this scenario. By using Finder, it has to go from the SD card to the Mac and then from the Mac to the cloud.

Use the iCloud.com Web Interface

To solve this, you need to bypass your Mac. This can be accomplished by using the web version of iCloud (open https://icloud.com in a browser) and upload the content directly from your SD card.

Simply click on the "Upload" icon, then browse to and select the files you wish to load to the cloud.

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This will upload to iCloud without using your Mac as the intermediary.

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