I’m moving away from Box for my personal cloud archive (documents, etc.) that we often access. I already have iCloud+ (2 TB), but I am not sure how good for this purpose it will be compared to DropBox in terms of ease and reliability.

@pratik I made the switch from Dropbox to just iCloud and I definitely miss the ability to create links to specific files or folders.

@pratik I’ve been using it for years now and it works very reliably for me. You can share files and folders, although that process is still a bit tedious. But with the new ‘Keep downloaded’ option in the upcoming iOS and macOS most of my annoyances seem to be gone. And ever since Chronosync also can make local backups from iCloud Drive files and folders, I use it professionally as well.

@bapsi I noticed that shortcoming, but currently, it's just me and my wife who accesses it, and we yell out the folder location across rooms.

@samgrover That's great to know. I've about 5.6 GB in the free plan but I need more if I need to move all my backup.

@ArnnoldHoogerwerf Glad to hear about the reliability. Can you tell me more about the ‘Keep downloaded’ annoyance?

@pratik personal cloud archive with or without syncing with current device? I have iCloud 2TB as well but I can't delete files from my mac/phone and assume its still available in iCloud. That auto sync assures that you can never quite delete stuff unless you want it gone permanently. I use amazon photos just for this - they are the only provider I've seen who allow maintaining a copy on cloud without needing it to be on my phone/mac at all times. Really helps a lot with RAW and photos.

@stupendousman I want it synced across my devices for quick access (e.g., copy of passport or DL). I need to figure out what option for upload-and-forget-it. For smaller files, I might just use iCloud since it optimizes storage but for RAW photos, I can use something else.

@pratik Yeah your use case is precisely how I use iCloud+Amazon Photos for. All RAW photos and big videos go there. Everything else remains in iCloud. I do maintain another copy of docs on Amazon Drive too because of my previous experience with iCloud where they just lost all my photos on older phone and did nothing to provide a fix.

@stupendousman True but what I’ve seen on iCloud is that, not all files are saved locally and thus don’t take up space. But you can see them and download to your device if you wish. I hear that iOS 18 will let you keep some files “always downloaded”. Box Drive works this way.