Carbon Copy Cloner Backs Up Cloud-Only Content

Could this feature be used to migrate iCloud data to a different account?

I don’t think so because Carbon Copy Cloner is managing the existence of the local files. I’d need to know more about what you were trying to achieve to be able to make a better suggestion.

A relative has two Apple ID’s, one w/ all the purchases, the other w/ iCloud. The iCloud account is @me.com which should explain a bit. Ideally, they would like to consolidate iCloud to the account w/ the purchases, but reassign the @.me address to that one, and either close or just abandon the other. The reassignment of the addresses seems doable, but I have no idea about transferring the iCloud data. (I just say “NO” to iCloud.)

Apple is apparently adamant about not transferring purchases.

Thanks, Adam!

I personally own a laptop with a large enough drive to maintain all of my files. About a year and a half ago I made the mistake of turning on iCloud, and it removed quite a number of files from this laptop drive so that I do not have access to these files when I am off-line. This can happen quite often.

I have been using Carbon Copy Conner for years and I have backed up all the data on this laptop drive onto a separate drive on my network.

Is there a way that I may use Carbon Copy Cloner (or some other method) to maintain originals of all of these iCloud files on my laptop so my complete copy of files exists there, exists on iCloud, exists on my Carbon Copy Cloner back up, and is available for utilization with my iPhone iPad, and other devices, which do not have large drives so they can grab them as needed?

Paul

In theory, Apple fixed this bug in Sonoma. If you have Optimized Mac Storage turned off, all iCloud Drive files should exist on your Mac, but apparently, that wasn’t always true before.

There shouldn’t be any issue with doing this—it’s just work. They might look at these Take Control books for advice:

And no, purchases can’t be transferred.

That’s what I thought, Adam. I will recommend the TCO’s.

Thanks.

PS.
Do you know if FastSpring is sorted? My relatives patience is already thin.

Saints be praised! I open the file which I haven’t opened since 2000 and lo and behold. The information was there. So now my question is what does that little cloud icon with the “!" In the middle of it mean?

Paul.

FWIW, I just purchased the TCO Apple ID book. It went through Paddle.

As you saw, Joe’s working on switching to Paddle—sounds like that’s just happened.

According to this page, you’re out of iCloud space.

Now that is odd. What am I missing?

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I was afraid you were going to say that.

I wonder if the ! icon also means that there’s some sort of sync error. What happens if you move the file out of iCloud and back in to force a resync?

Sorry for taking so long getting back to you. I was in the hospital for a tuneup and I’m doing well.

It appears most of these documents are really old ones. I moved one out of the documents folder into the downloads folder, which is not stored on iCloud, and then put it back into the documents folder, using command Z so it went back to exactly where it was. The cloud icon with the “!" blinked on and off for a bit however, after about five minutes, it stopped blinking and the cloud with the "!” remains.

In the left-hand column of the Finder, the iCloud Drive appears to be doing a synchronization. By that I mean I see a pie with a slice of it next to the title with the cut out of the pie getting larger oh, so slowly. My net work appears to be uploading anywhere from 15 to 20 KB per second. No wonder this is taking quite a long time.

Paul.

Glad the tuneup went well—always good to get your oil changed every so often.

Doesn’t sound like an easy fix, but @glennf just wrote about a number of things that can unstick iCloud, so perhaps run through his collection.

Is there any other backup app that will backup the files stored directly in iCloud Drive?

Similarly, do any of the cloud backup companies like BackBlaze actually backup files from your Desktop if you have “Optimized Mac Storage” and some of the files are removed from your local storage?

Edit: I ask because my dad uses iDrive backup, and he’s running into errors on his automatic backup. Their support tells him the problem is files he’s marked to backup are not actually on his local disk because of this iCloud feature.

This will solve the problem of my daughter backing up her Dropbox Pro files which are online-only.

What I don’t see is a solution to the other half of her problem: backing up her iCloud Photo Library using optimized storage. That is hundreds of GB. Without that, this is yet another partial solution at best.

I have opened a ticket with Bombich today. I’ll let you know what I hear.

Mike from Bombich offered a nice, detailed reply which effectively said it’s not plausible, as I expected:

My daughter in particular … uses iCloud Photo Library “Optimized Storage” to deal with her rather large photo library.

This is actually one type of data that we can’t retrieve from the cloud. Photos doesn’t work like other applications with regard to iCloud. Rather than relying on placeholders, the Photos database keeps track of which files are cloud-only (and retains just a thumbnail preview). So when we’re copying the Photos library file, we can’t know if files are cloud-only because that application isn’t using placeholders.

1. Do you have a solution for backing up an optimized iCloud Photo Library?

Not aside from “turn off ‘Optimized storage’”. There really isn’t a solution, and can’t be – not as long as the Photos library database is holding (hiding) the identity of the cloud-only files. I suppose in theory I could try to read that database and figure out which files are cloud-only, but without also making changes to that database (i.e. on the backup), I wouldn’t be able to produce a backup of the Photos Library file that actually recognized the downloaded content. I’d never try to do that, though, because that database changes every year, possibly multiple times a year. (and I looked just now – the level of complexity within the Photos Library has really grown out of control)

So this is too bad because it means the CCC solution doesn’t solve the problem of backing up an optimized Photo Library. A half-backup is not a backup. I love the solution he has, though, and I might try it for Dropbox. But the fault is Apple’s that Photos has no easy solution, and I’m not happy about it.

The thing about cloud storage is that the vendors will assure you there is no need for you to have a local backup–they have extensive backups to guard against loss. Of course, if you want quick local access to some files, or you will temporarily lose access, you can mark files also to be stored offsite.

In the real world, you may be skeptical of those claims, and Carbon Copy Cloner has provided a method for backing up most cloud contents. However, as I understand it, you must have enough local space on your main drive to temporarily store the backup files until they can be copied to the backup disk. The issue with photo and media libraries is that you may need more space to store the files temporarily.

Specifically with iCloud Photos, Apple provides an option to store a copy locally. You can even put it on an external drive. Carbon Copy Cloner would have no problem backing that up. However, if you can’t do that, you are in your daughter’s situation.

I have an iPhone, iPad, laptop, and desktop Mac, all using iCloud Photos. My collection of about 16,500 photos and videos takes a bit under 200GB. I have optimized on all devices except my desktop, which is backed up nightly.

So, you could use the following process to get a backup of the library:

1. Move the local version to a drive large enough to hold the whole library and turn off optimization.
2. You now have a backup.
3. Turn on optimization on the computer and point back to the version on the home drive.
4. Dismount the external drive.
   This procedure is time-consuming, and you may only want to do it infrequently.

So, the surest way to ensure your photo library is easily backed up is to have one regularly backed-up computer with enough storage to contain the whole library comfortably so that you don’t need to optimize photo storage for that computer.

At one point, I experimented with moving my photo library to an external HDD but found processing slowed significantly. So, I moved it back. I’ll put it on an external SSD if I run out of space.

Yes, and this is exactly what I do. I requires me to maintain a “server” (iMac) that has external drives to store my 1.5 TB photo library. This is not something people should have to do. But I put up with it.

But I have a family of 5, and my kids all have their own photo libraries. And what you described is not scalable to multiple people. I discussed this in another thread where I showed the problems: the other user needs an account with their own Apple ID; that account must always be logged in, even after reboots; that account must have an external drive, since Apple refused to allow iCloud Photo Libraries to reside on NAS devices like my Synology. At every step, Apple makes this implausible.

Not much. 2 GB max.

CCC attempts to retain no more than 100 files and no more than 2GB of temporarily-downloaded content at a time.

CCCs solution is really perfect, except for 2 big gotchas:

1. it’s not designed with a NAS as destination. (Time Machine handles this fine) I want to back up my data to network attached storage (NAS) - Bombich Software
2. it has no solution for Optimized iCloud Photo Libraries (Time Machine can’t solve this, and neither can anything else).

I speculated to Mike Bombich that really only Apple can provide a solution to making a low-footprint local backup of if your iCloud Photos, and the place they would do that is in Time Machine, where it should be. While they’re at it, they should also provide a backup for online-only files, as CCC has done. Apple created this problem; they might have to fix it.

Yes, I absolutely am skeptical of cloud provider claims that they can’t lose our files. Witness Google Cloud Drive a couple of days ago…

Besides, syncing is not backup! If I accidentally delete a photo, I want to be able to recover it. That’s what having a backup allows.

Let’s be clear. Apple has intentionally designed the system so as to make it nigh impossible to use Photos without paying them monthly for storage. I won’t bother to speculate why they did this, but one could be forgiven for thinking that their commitment to growing the “Services” line of their income might have something to do with it.

Correction. They made it nigh impossible to use Photos with iCloud storage without paying them for a storage upgrade.

There is absolutely no problem using it with local-only photo libraries. Which is exactly how I have always used it.

Yes, the libraries can get very large. If mine ends up getting too big for comfort, then I’ll probably create a new library and move the old one to external (and probably slower) storage.

You might be able to create a work-around for the Photos backup issue by using this method: In Photos, select a number of photos (I’ve done this with up to 200 at a time, but you could probably select more). From the Share icon, choose “Copy iCloud Link.” It takes a few seconds to create the link, but when it is finished, paste the link into a browser and then you can download all the photos you selected. Save them to a folder that you have labelled appropriately (because the file names of the photos are generic), and run CCC and/or Time Machine. Once you’ve downloaded them and backed them up, you can delete them because the originals are still in Photos. The biggest downside is that you probably can’t download and back them all up in one go; you have to get copies from iCloud in batches.

How does this differ from just using Photos’ export menu (or drag/drop from the app to a folder)?

Probably not at all. I always use the iCloud link because I can save the URL for later use.

Doesn’t it expire after 30 days?

That’s a good question. I don’t know. I have never tried to use one after 30 days. I don’t personally use iCloud links for backup purposes, I just thought it might be a useful answer to the problem of downloading photos from iCloud for backup. I take hundreds of photos a day and send them around to various people who need local copies, and that’s how I do it. Nobody has ever complained that a link expired, but there’s a good chance nobody has ever tried to download any of my photos after 30 days (also I usually delete most of those photos by 30 days so, for me the question is largely moot).

I do not optimize storage by having Apple move files to iCloud Drive, but I do use iCloud Drive.

Thank you for the link to the Apple support page. I had been wondering what some of those icons (mainly the Download status icon and the Waiting to Upload status icon) meant.

I had a file that had the Waiting to Upload status icon. It had been been that way for over a week. I confirmed it was not available from another Mac logged into my Apple account. I moved it from iCloud Drive to Documents, then moved it back. (I did not use cmd-Z.) After a moment, the status icon changed to Downloaded (shouldn’t that be Uploaded?) and it was available on the other Mac. Note that the vast majority of my files in iCloud Drive do not have any status icon shown.

Aw, nuts. Now I need to read and try to understand another article. (Howard Oakley’s article taxed me. I hope to do better with Glenn’s.) And probably get a couple TC books.

Thanks for the links.

I just noticed that backup software Arq, which I also use, appears to have support for “materializing” cloud-only files that are encountered:

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It appears that was added quietly back in April:

https://www.arqbackup.com/download/arqbackup/arq7_release_notes.html

What I can’t find in the Help or online is any explanation about how it handles this “materialization”. The magic of CCC is that it pulls down no more than 2GB at a time, then releases those files back to the cloud, ensuring your disk space doesn’t fill. If Arq doesn’t do that, then it will basically be undermining people who (often pay extra) to have smart-sync logic that frees up local disk space in favor of pulling things down only as needed.

I’ll ping the dev for info.

From the dev:

If you choose “materialize”, Arq opens the file with a flag that tells macOS to tell the “file provider” to make the file data local. Then Arq reads it. Where the file provider stores the data, and how long the file provider keeps the file data around, is up to the file provider.

I don’t think this will play well for people with limited local storage. Currently, I only have Arq running on my Mac “server”. This is basically a Mac I maintain with a ton of storage just to solve these inadequacies in backup solutions. Very expensive workaround to a critical problem.

So here’s the roundup:

1. CCC manages local storage in the face of cloud-only files well, but doesn’t support cloud destinations for its backups. You can setup a remote Mac, but that’s more hassle. So this makes it hard to have good off site backup support.

2. Arq handles cloud destinations well, but doesn’t play well for people using cloud-only files because they have limited local storage. (Does Backblaze solve this one?)

3. Neither one knows how to solve the problem of backing up an Optimized iCloud Photo Library

As I see it, users have no good backup solutions at this time without either 1) trusting the cloud, or 2) ditching all cloud-only and optimized features.

Am I missing something?

Hello, 2023!

So, here in the future I’m cleaning up my digital footprint a bit and trimming my subscriptions. Dropbox is the next big to-do on my list, as it is just a little less useful to me while more than doubling in annual subscription price over the last couple of years. My spouse sort-of uses it, and I use it less heavily now that I’m not doing outside gigs as much. (No further need to make a foreign, Windows-based computer bend to my will by installing Dropbox, for instance.)

I’ve decided to use iCloud+ as a simpler and much less expensive cloud file-sharer. But getting a half-TB of files out of Dropbox is not as easy as it should be, particularly if you’re “saving local disk storage space” by making files cloud-only. I tried copying directly to my 6TB external hard drive, but both Finder and Path Finder hate the idea and it takes hours to copy, say, 30 GB of files from Dropbox that way.

Then I ran across this thread, and even though I haven’t used CCC since the days of DAT cartridge machines (yes, I once had one on my Mac desktop at home), I downloaded the latest release today and spun it up.

Works like a charm! Mike Bombich does one thing, comprehensively, and does it well.

I have no desire to move the files directly from Dropbox to iCloud, because I want a local copy on the large drive. But once I establish that new “home in the cloud” by moving those files into iCloud, I want to sync what’s there to my local drive periodically. I’m hoping this is now possible.

If you disable “Optimize Mac Storage,” it will sync all the time. Except if you use your iPhone as Personal Hotspot, I believe.

If you enable “Optimize Mac Storage,” the files you need the most will be only in the cloud. I’m joking, but that is what happened to me. Maybe because the files I need change during the year? So files I used last summer are purged from my Mac next summer? I do not know if it works like that still because I have disabled it for some years now.

Does Dropbox have a web interface where you can download files directly to an external storage device?

I know I can do this with iCloud Drive, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive.

In the web interface Dropbox will allow you to download, but doesn’t appear to allow specifying the destination, so it ends up in your Downloads folder.

However, I’m using Arc which does allow you to direct downloads to a local file destination of your choice. I can do that, therefore, problem solved (as long as I remember to set the preference back when I’m done).

Thanks, @Shamino !

Isn’t that the way they say it goes?

In Dropbox, I use a few folders that need to be local all the time on more than one device. Microsoft template files, Typinator strings, and so on come to mind right away. Most everything else can stay in the cloud until I need to use it.

The nice feature that Dropbox added, probably before iCloud+ storage, was Finder and Path Finder integration. You can choose on each Mac the global setting of “online only” and then specify particular files will be available offline.

Time to get me a Take Control guide, I believe.

Your web browser should let you configure the destination or have it ask you for every download (as I do).

In Safari, go to Settings → General → File download location → Ask for each download:

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For Firefox, go to Settings → General → Always ask you where to save files:

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You will have to pick the location for each file downloaded, but the browser should remember the last-selected location, so after the first file, you can just tap the Enter key for each one to put them all in the same place.

Or just pick your preferred destination as the download folder and change it back when you’re done.

The browsers you cite do allow that.

[EDIT: Oops, I overlooked this:

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Probably not the best place to have added that in the interface, but my last comment still holds because that’s where it will be until the end of time, or until TBC perhaps decides to pick up development again…no, the end of time!]

Arc does not allow you to ask for a destination every time. It allows you to set preferences per space, which could be a workaround for anyone still using Arc.

Side effect of using a browser that the developer decided they were done developing.

I suddenly remembered I had read something about the option to choose whether to keep files local or not being added. So, I took a look.

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I have that set, but Firefox also saves a copy with the web site’s filename. In other words, when I choose where to save a file that I’m about to download, I often change the name. Then I end up with two copies, one with the name I specify and one with default name from the web site. Am I doing something wrong?

Are you sure that’s not just a temporary file? When a large download is in progress, you will see two files - a zero-length file with the name you specified and another file with a name ending in “.part”.

The part file is a temporary file used during the download. After the download completes, its content should be saved to the name you specified and then it should go away.

The name of the “.part” file will be the default name from the server (before you typed in the proper name), because the download actually begins before you provide the final name/location.

If you’re seeing the part file persisting after the download completes, then you may have an actual problem.

It is not a temporary file; it’s a duplicate, for sure. As an example, I download a monthly credit card statement from a bank (and it is not a large file). I give it the name I want. But I end up with two identical PDF files, one with the name I specified and one with the name the web site offered and I overwrote with the name I wanted.

In case it matters, in Firefox > Settings > General > Downloads, I have changed “Save files to” to my Documents folder, and I have checked “Always ask you where to save files”. With the monthly statement, I save the PDF to my Documents folder, and Firefox puts the duplicate with the original filename there as well. (I changed the “Save files to” from Downloads to Documents because Firefox was putting the duplicates there, and I’d rather clear them from Documents than Downloads.)

Very strange. If the “.part” file isn’t going away after the download completes, then there may be something preventing Firefox from deleting it.

I wonder if the destination folder has something (permissions, ACLs, other security settings) that allow it to create but not delete a file in that location.

I do know that on Windows, the temporary file appears to remain after the download, but it’s just the GUI desktop interface. Telling it to “refresh” the window or the desktop makes it go away. I wonder you might be seeing something similar.

Do you see the file from a command-line? The Finder doesn’t have an option to refresh a window, but does it remain after restarting the Finder?

Are we talking about the same file? What is the full name of the duplicate file? Does it end with “.pdf” (the extension of the actual file) or with “.pdf.part” (meaning it’s a Firefox-temporary file).

Update. The bank changed its web interface sometime in the past month and now I can avoid the issue. (It used to be that my only option was Download; now I can View or Download. If I View, I can then save and avoid the duplicate file problem.)

Having said that, I just tried it and I believe I was misunderstanding the sequence. It used to be that I needed to click the Download button to see the statement. Clicking the Download button put the statement in a new tab in Firefox, from which I would save the document with the name I wanted. This time, I paid more attention. When I clicked download and got the statement in a new tab, Firefox created the file that I don’t want at the same time as putting it in a new tab. Then when I saved the statement with name I wanted, I had two files. Until just now, I hadn’t looked at the Documents folder between clicking Download (which I thought only put the statement in a new tab) and saving the statement.

Thank you for trying to help.

I started to answer your post before visiting the bank’s web site and making the above discoveries. You wondered about ACLs. Terminal shows the permissions of my Documents folder as drwx------@. How do I find what the @ is signifying?

On a related-in-my-mind issue, is there a way to clear all entries in Firefox’s Downloads list at once, or do I need to removed the entries one at a time?

Use ls -l@ and/or the xattr command.

If I understand the question correctly, open the Downloads window (cmd-J), then type cmd-A to “Select All”, and then hit the delete key.

Aha! I think I know what the problem is.

At some point (not too long ago), Firefox gained a feature where after downloading a PDF, it will open a window presenting the file (with a file: URL pointing at the file just downloaded). If you then perform a “save” operation (CMD-S), it saves another copy of the file, in addition to the one you downloaded.

If you see this, then don’t try saving the file. Just locate the already-downloaded file and rename it. On my system, the files appear on the desktop (my default download folder), so I can quickly see it and then delete/rename/move it.

When you tell it to view the file, it won’t create a local file, but will display the embedded image. Saving that will only create the file you want. I generally prefer this because, for things like credit card statements, I just want to print the statement, not save a copy.

I think this article describes how to disable this feature, so download will just perform a download instead of viewing it.

Yes. From the download icon in the toolbar, click “Show all downloads”:

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You can also select Tools → Downloads from the menu-bar or type CMD-J to get the all-downloads window. From there click the “Clear Downloads” button:

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This will purge the download history and will remove any “.part” files from incomplete/aborted/failed downloads. (It will not purge in-progress downloads).

It does not, however, delete the downloaded files themselves. That’s up to you to do.