iCloud Photo Library , when it fits your needs , is a neat elbow room to avoid having to manage where your images and video wind up . You captivate video on your iPhone or drag an image into Photos in macOS , and it just syncs everywhere while making a fundamental transcript at iCloud . While I pick up regularly from mass get difficulty with aspects of it , it ’s a way to subjugate the stress about how much reposition you have on any given equipment , especially iOS equipment .
( And , yes , once again : if you delete an image on one equipment that ’s unite to iCloud Photo Library , it edit iteverywhere . Apple ’s admonition when you attempt to delete isreal . )
However , there ’s one configuration I ca n’t advise , and Macworld reader Eric writes in with a question that prompts a discussion . He ’s wondering if he could rely on iCloud to be his “ main backup of image . ” The short solution is no , but it ’s not about distrust in Apple ’s technological ability . Rather , about the valetudinarianism of all real thing , and the danger of putting all one ’s digital egg in one basket , no matter how firmly the basket - store company is arrest that basketful .
iCloud Photo Library can be configured in iOS and macOS to either retain media you capture or import on those devices and download at full resolution any photos and videos you spell and capture on any other linked computer , phone , or tablet . However , as I ’ve written about many times , the optimized storage optionis sound for most hoi polloi on their iOS devices , because most of us with sufficiently enceinte photo libraries lack the storage necessary on an iPhone or iPad . ( I paid the premium on my latest iPhone to get a 256GB — but my Photos depository library is over 230 GB . )
you’re able to also enable this in Photos for macOS ( photo > Preferences > iCloud ) , but if you enable this feature on all linked Macs ( whether that ’s one or more ) , you no longer have a full - resolution transcript of all your medium . Your local copy of Photos reliably retains only image and video you ’ve viewed or that it has n’t change over to a thumbnail only computer memory . There ’s no way to control which media remains locally cached at full resolution .
As a result , you ’re relying completely on Apple for this support , and you ca n’t reach out to iCloud and backup that championship . It ’s a individual copy , which imply a single percentage point of failure . While Apple has been very reliable and , like all cloud provider , uses multiple geographically tautological storage mate with forms of deep reposition and support , we do n’t know the details about this nor under what condition a failure could occur . ( Some cloud supplier are more specific about where data centers are and their backup and geographic redundancy . )
This is why all good backup advice recommends you have efficaciously three transcript of a afford thing you want to keep forever : a live transcript on sensitive you may get at ; a local copy that ’s offline or physically and mechanically disjoined ; and an off - site copy that you could retrieve . People recommend different combinations of this and unlike strategies . ( This is often foretell “ 3 - 2 - 1 ” : three copies , two local , one off site . )
My shape is :
I should probably also routinely clone this medium to a drive I vex in a good - deposit boxwood , to keep it secure in case of fervency , flood , or natural disaster hitting my home , but I have n’t pull that quite off yet . ( A 4 - 2 - 2 solution , I suppose ! )
Eric also asks if Time Machine copies in high spirits - firmness or thumbnails when you have Photos in macOS set to utilize optimise storage : Time Machine only replicate datum that ’s put in locally , so any images or videos that survive only as thumbnail views locally will be endorse up in that mode .
Conceivably , Apple could produce a kind of high - grade iCloud API that it could extend to other cloud - hosted provider to practice with details you ply , so you could perform additional , non - Apple backups off - site encrypted backups . I ca n’t guess the company doing that , because that kind of behavior signal to users that the service islessreliable , when it would in fact offer more reliableness on top of what seems to be completely unanimous dependableness .
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