It also took me quite a while to wrap my head around all the not-really-documented nuances. If you fit the profile of someone with more storage in iCloud than on your local Mac, this is mission-critical stuff. How MacOS represents iCloud 'optimized' files on disk The theory is that if you have one Mac, iCloud Drive, and Time Machine backing up to a server or spare external drive, you have a fully valid 3-2-1 backup strategy and your files are safe.Įxcept… not so much. Time Machine is a backup program that runs in the background of your Mac and backs up your drive to either an external drive or a drive located on the network - whether that's another Mac or a centrally located file server like a NAS. If you have a second Mac, you get a third copy, because iCloud syncs down to that Mac.īut there's more. With iCloud Drive and one Mac, you ostensibly get two copies: one is on your local machine and one is in iCloud. We selected a handful of devices that passed our reliability torture tests and offer superior usability and feature sets. If cloud-based servers don't meet all of your storage needs, consider a NAS solution. The best network-attached storage devices If you see inaccuracies in our content, please report the mistake via this form.

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