by Someone on 10/13/2023, 3:25:51 PM
> thoughts on reliability of iCloud primary (only?) storage of important documents?
Using it for primary storage is fine, using anything as the only storage is never fine.
iCloud isn’t a backup solution. Combine it with Time Machine for making backups to a local disk and you’re probably good enough.
The risk of losing the hard disk while also losing iCloud data is low. The risk of mismanaging your backups may be higher than that.
For extra safety or if you think you’ll sometimes really need a non-current version of a file, use multiple local disks, swap them around each week or so and keep them in different locations, or store the files you may need non-current version of in GitHub/GitLab/…
Setup: two MacBooks, two iPads, and one iPhone all logged in to iCloud with the same ID, and all set up to sync "desktop & documents folders". Convenient - I can review code, documents, etc. while traveling and work from either MacBook (one is large, one is travel size).
Yesterday I notice that passwords are not syncing across devices - password change on macbook was not reflected on iPhone. I go it to iCloud settings on MacBook to check if sync is turned ON. For some reason it (iCloud Passwords & Keychain > Sync this Mac) shows sync turned OFF (it was definitely ON before). I move the slider to turn the sync ON; at this point the entire settings window just freezes. First time ever I had the window completely freeze on MacBook. I wait about 5 minutes and reboot the MacBook (reboot seems to work normally). After reboot, passwords do sync up and I think "all good".
Today I realize large amounts of data is gone from all iCloud on all devices. For example, here's all that's left of a large CPP project:
project_name cpp src CMakeLists.txt tools Dockerfile.el7
That's it - two files. Out of hundreds. I check all devices, also check iCloud Drive via web browser - same. Luckily this one's also in Git. But many other documents are not. I've been completely relying on iCloud for storage of personal documents for about a year now.
Google and ChatGPT seem to not be of much help. Apple support in progress but not much so far. I would greatly appreciate any suggestions. And in general, thoughts on reliability of iCloud primary (only?) storage of important documents?