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arturmeireles

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 1, 2009
88
18
Portugal
I tried to look for something on the net but nothing interesting came up so I would like to ask, the members, if there is or if already had any type of rumor of Time Machine being able to back up on iCloud? Thanks!
 

Dwalls90

macrumors 603
Feb 5, 2009
5,428
4,416
No.

Time machine backs up to a partition. You can't create an iCloud partition.
 

maflynn

macrumors Haswell
May 3, 2009
73,565
43,547
You'll need a service dedicated to backing up to the cloud. Apple/Time Machine currently does not support this.
 

aldrinjtauro

macrumors regular
Jul 3, 2014
202
108
Birmingham, AL
I guess technically you could create a sparseimage formatted as HFS+, store it in your iCloud Drive, have it mount at startup, and use it as a Time Machine location. Don't know what it would do to your connectivity speeds, iCloud Drive, or battery life though. Not to mention, you'll need a large iCloud storage package.
 
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MikhailT

macrumors 601
Nov 12, 2007
4,582
1,325
Please do not use a sync service that is not designed to back up your data and retain its integrity. If you unintentionally delete a file and it doesn't stay on the service forever, it's not a backup service.

iCloud and Dropbox are not backup services. BackBlaze, CrashPlan, and others are dedicated backups service. However, be careful with external drives backup, some of these services have inactivity timer for external drives. I'd also recommend a backup service where you can provide your own encryption key instead of relying on the service to hold it. Otherwise, any data are exposed to them.

The business version of Dropbox might work but it would be expensive compared to the BackBlaze or other services.

My suggestion is to use an external drive or a NAS in your home network to back up your data via Time Machine. Not only is this local to your network, it will be faster to restore as the cloud services are not likely to max out your bandwidth for restoring.
 

happyslayer

macrumors 65816
Feb 3, 2008
1,027
578
Glendale, AZ
Thanks for the BackBlaze suggestion! I didn't know about them. I just did a bunch of research and they look like a good backup solution that is secure for my customers. I am going to try them as well for my own stuff. Again, thanks!
 

boston04and07

macrumors 68000
May 13, 2008
1,797
884
It would be nice if, along the way, Apple someday lets us use our iCloud storage for something like this. I wouldn't use it as my only backup, but it would be nice to add to the several Time Machine drives I currently use for when I'm away from home. I'd upgrade to 1tb for something like this.
 

MikhailT

macrumors 601
Nov 12, 2007
4,582
1,325
It would be nice if, along the way, Apple someday lets us use our iCloud storage for something like this. I wouldn't use it as my only backup, but it would be nice to add to the several Time Machine drives I currently use for when I'm away from home. I'd upgrade to 1tb for something like this.

I believe Apple will expand iCloud in the future to cover Time Machine backups but they have to figure out a few things out first. First, they need to do selective sync properly, so everything is not sync'ed to all Macs. Right now, iCloud is still pushing all data. I know in Sys Prefs, you can de-select certain apps from syncing the iCloud data but that's not a good idea to de-select Time Machine and the backups stop, it can get confusing.
 
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