Backing up external drives to iCloud

[Buzzrock 15136]

I'm generally pretty computer savvy but I'm trying to wrap my head around the best way to do this.

I have a new Mac Mini (M1, it's sweet) that only has a 256GB internal drive. I have an older USB drive enclosure that has a 1TB SATA drive and a 512GB SSD drive mounted in it. The Mini can see them just fine.

I have the 2TB iCloud plan and it's pretty much empty. I would like to put all the data from the two external drives into iCloud and then destroy them. However, I can't copy 1.5TB of data onto a 256GB drive.

My thought is that if I copy the data from the external drives to the Mini's iCloud folder then they will get uploaded to iCloud and then the iCloud storage manager will manage what stays local. Is that my best bet? Will that even work? I tried uploading directly to iCloud via the web interface, but you can't upload folders that way, only individual files.

[tbone_ 14448]

Are you married to iCloud?

I use a service called sugarsync. It allows you to mimic a file structure on your computer and it will sync real time what’s in that file structure. Works fantastic.

You can then access that same file structure from any device or the web.

First time takes a bit to upload everything but it will do it which is exactly what you are looking for I think.

[Buzzrock 15136]

I'm pretty married to iCloud. I'm bought in on the ecosystem at this point with many devices across four family members.

It turns out that my strategy seems to be working. I'm just slowly dragging folders over to iCloud and then Apple is managing the space. So far so good.