Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com.
On today's episode let's look at files stored on iCloud Drive and how they are and are not
backed up.
Now there is a lot of confusion over iCloud Drive files and using Time Machine.
These files are not backed up in the same way as files in your hard drive would be.
So let's look at the different reasons you may need a backup file of something and how
this relates to iCloud Drive files.
So the first reason that you may need a backup is in case of a catastrophic failure.
Say your Mac is stolen or it is damaged or it's just some sort of hard drive failure.
Something like that.
In that case you don't have to worry about the iCloud Drive files because they are automatically
synced to Apple servers.
You have all of your documents here in these preset folders, Keynote, Numbers, Pages, etc
and you also have your own files you've stored in iCloud Drive of any file type you want.
They are all synced with Apple servers so you get your new Mac or your restored Mac
and you just simply log on with your iCloud account and now, under iCloud Drive, you will
have all of your files again.
You can even go to another Mac temporarily and be able to log on and see all your files
on iCloud Drive.
So iCloud Drive automatically takes care of one of the primary reasons that you have backup
which is to protect these files in case of catastrophe.
Okay, so the second reason that you may need a backup is to revert to a previous version
of a file.
Now this is where Time Machine usually comes in for a document that is on your hard drive.
Time Machine is now actually a few years old and was developed before a lot of the current
software save things and versions.
iCloud Drive files aren't really saved in Time Machine this way.
If we enter Time Machine here and we are looking at Pages documents we'll see that we don't
really have any version history here.
We have our current files all saved but we don't have the previous versions of these
files.
I know I've created many version of this file, for instance, and there is nothing there.
There is no previous versions to restore to.
So what do you do when you want to get a previous version.
The thing is with modern files like the files saved in Pages and lots of other apps you
don't need to use Time Machine for that.
You can go into the file itself.
So I'll open up this one here in Pages.
If I go to File, I can go to Revert To, Browse All Versions and it opens up a time machine-like
interface.
Now I'm not in Time Machine and I actually have the previous versions of the file here.
So I can go back for instance to different times and I can view the previous versions
of the file.
So like here is one before I added this image.
I can restore this version here.
I can click on it and even select the text from it and objects from it and Copy.
So I don't even have to restore if it is just a piece of text or something I want to get.
This is actually much more useful than the previous way of doing it with Time Machine
because every time you hit Save, Command S, you are saving a new version of the file.
So if you have a document that you are rapidly developing you can do that every few minutes
or every time you do something important in it.
You are not relying on this once an hour backup thing.
You are also not relying on the fact that you've got enough hard drive space because
those versions are going to get cleared out as you run out of hard drive space and they
need to get replaced with newer versions of things.
So you have complete control over how many versions and when the versions are saved by
just hitting Command S at any time.
This works for all of the main Apple apps and a lot of third party apps now as well.
Now a third reason you want to have a backup in case you accidentally delete a file.
This happens occasionally.
This is when you select a file and you just get rid of it and you want to restore it.
Now Mac users are lucky here because you've got a failsafe.
Say I select this file and I shouldn't be deleting it but I hit Command delete anyway.
Since it is an iCloud Drive file I'm going to get this extra warning here.
So it is a little harder to actually delete a file.
But say I do it anyway.
I delete it.
Now it is gone and it is not going to appear in Time Machine because Time Machine is only
going to keep the most recent snapshot, which is this.
But it does go into the Trashcan.
So I look in Trash and I see there is the file.
I can Control click on it and put back.
Or I can simply drag it out of the trashcan and in there.
So for Mac users you've got that safety mechanism of the Trashcan.
If you are in the habit of throwing things away by putting them in the trash and then
immediately emptying the trash it is probably a habit to get out of.
You don't want to do that.
It kind of defeats the purpose of Trash.
I only delete or empty the trash every once in a while.
I've got plenty of hard drive space.
If you are running out of hard drive space then you may want to consider a larger hard
drive or cleaning off some files because you should have enough hard drive space to save
some things you have recently deleted in the trash and protect files from this problem.
Now iOS users are out of luck here because if you do delete something in iOS, say in
the Pages document area, it will be gone.
There is no trashcan there to be saved.
So hopefully this is something Apple is going to address at some point.
The ability to recover from this mistake of deleting a file that you shouldn't delete.
Okay that is for these app folders here, Keynote, Numbers, Pages, etc.
What happens if I go to a folder I created on my own and just stored some miscellaneous
documents in and I delete a file there.
So I've got this dontdelete.txt.
Command Delete.
I confirm I want to delete it and I realize, wait a minute I shouldn't have deleted that.
I still have it in the Trashcan so I put it back from there.
But in this case since this is a folder I've created, not one of these default ones, I
also have it in Time Machine.
So I'm going to enter Time Machine with that folder selected, it is very important to remember
to do that, and you will see it as it currently is but I can also go back in time here and
I can see there is my Don't Delete saved at an earlier backup.
So Time Machine backups for this purpose do work as long as you don't use those regular
app folders.
Now I'm hoping Apple changes this because there is no reason why they can't have Time
Machine working just fine in the regular folders, Keynote, Numbers, Pages folders, as well as
in folders that you create on your own.