Apple’s integration of iCloud into all its services and the availability of iCloud Drive makes it an attractive sync and storage option. You can use it to make sure your contacts and events are up to date across your Macs and iOS devices, and reachable via iCloud.com. Your photos and videos automatically upload for backup, and your passwords and other secret data gets securely synchronized on all your hardware—in a way that even Apple can’t peer into. You can even offload files on your Desktop and in your Documents file if you start running out of storage in macOS.
But there’s a problem: Apple doesn’t offer any way to let you backup the data for which it has the only copy. And, in many cases, you may have a mix of information that could make it hard to restore, even if you have a full copy.
Macworld reader Mana wrote in about this particular issue. They asked for a method to backup iCloud Drive in particular, but the same issue applies more broadly to all iCloud services except iCloud Keychain and the People album’s facial ID in Photos (as I’ll explain below). Mana noted, quite accurately, “Good comprehensive backups would seem to be a vital precaution that we should all take.” Bravo.
It’s not that I worry that Apple will have some massive iCloud storage failure. They use multiple layers of file and geographic redundancy, just like all companies that operate cloud-storage, allowing recovery even when there are huge hardware failures or natural disasters.
But I don’t like the idea of having all one’s eggs in one basket. If the only copy of some or a good portion of your data remains on Apple’s servers, then if something goes terribly wrong for them, or, if for reasons beyond your control Apple suspends your Apple ID account or you permanently lose access for some reason, you need to have your own data stored separately. (What could go wrong? I regularly get email from readers who lost access to an old email address, and wind up with that address being the only way they can apparently recover their Apple ID account, and not being able to provide Apple with sufficient proof to regain use of it.)
Read more at Macworld.com