iCloud Drive disaster

I have had a bit of an iCloud Drive disaster. I was travelling overseas recently and took my old 2015 MacBook because I had to run some slides in the background of an event in a public space and didn’t want to take my new M3 Air in case it ‘walked’.

Sadly the old MBP ran like treacle, and in an attempt to free up some space in the hope of improving performance (it didn’t) I deleted a bunch of apps which save their data onto iCloud Drive. Back home again, all of my app files on iCloud (including Pages, Numbers and other Mac apps, as well as 3rd party apps like Drafts) are gone, although of course the apps remain.

Worse, I assumed my Time Machine backups would cover this, but none of the app related folders are in the Time Machine backup.

A quick google came up with an app Cisdem Data Recovery. Before I explore it and potentially pay out some $$$, has anyone any experience of this situation, or this software?

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Woof, sorry to hear.

What data is missing exactly? iCloud Drive → Pages → all of your documents, etc?

Have you checked icloud.com’s deleted file recovery options?

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Pages, numbers, any app that stored data on icloud - folders all empty on mac, folders don’t even appear in Time Machine. Nothing in recent deleted, I have been away 5 weeks so past the 30 day mark

I don’t have any experience with data recovery services, but before paying out, I would talk to Apple. Or better yet, first try to use its tools for recovering deleted iCloud files. I’m not hopeful that will work, because it specifies “deleted” files. The missing files weren’t expressly deleted by you, but seem to have been removed by the system because you deleted the app. So, I don’t know if Apple considers those files as “deleted”. But it’s worth a try!

If that fails, I would call Apple support to see if they have a way to restore these app-associated files.

This is not expected behavior. Throwing out an app should not delete the files that are explicitly stored in a folder that is visible to the user and appears to be just like any other folder. In fact, iOS explicitly asks you if you want to keep the data when you delete an app. Of course, that’s because the user doesn’t have explicit access to the filesystem in iOS. But if the Mac is behaving similarly, you should have been warned.

Regarding Time Machine, it’s concerning that it shows no backups. Of course, a huge problem with Time Machine is how it interacts with iCloud data.

Apple explicitly says that “Time Machine excludes system files and apps installed during macOS installation”. That’s it. Perhaps because of iCloud Drive’s legacy behavior on the Mac, these app-specific folders are not backed up because they’re considered part of the “system files”? If so, that’s a huge oversight.

Or, if you used the “optimize” function, perhaps those files were never present on the Mac being backed up by Time Machine. If they never were downloaded, they can’t be backed up. Again, that’s a huge oversight by Apple because this is never explicitly stated anywhere and users aren’t given a warning that the files that appear to be on the computer aren’t actually there. (I know, you can look at the icons carefully, but most of my clients are clueless about this.)

More importantly, if these missing files were never present on the Mac, then no data recovery service is going to work.

All of the Time Machine marketing emphasizes how it backs up your data, when in fact there are holes in that system. And worse, those holes can lead to data loss.

I’m really sorry you’re facing this. Hold Apple’s feet to the fire about your loss of data. They might have to dig into their servers to recover your missing files, but they should be made to feel the pain so they fix these holes. Good luck!

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Oh ouch. And I imagine nothing’s on your other devices, either?

Any iCloud backups available for those machines?

Disaster is right, though — it sounds like you need to talk to Apple support directly about this one.

I’ve had some success with this tool in the past, although my use case was bit different.

My team was migrating a Microsoft SQL Server over to new storage and it was unfortunately setup with multiple spanned volumes in Windows (software RAID). By the time I got called, the system wouldn’t boot. Restoring from backups wasn’t an option here as SQL servers don’t get backed up like normal servers with Veeam or Commvault, DBAs are in charge of their own backups, and they stopped backing up their server months prior for unknown reasons.

Mounting the volumes on another server also proved futile as the GPT headers were corrupt/deleted. With some effort we managed to recreate some GPT headers, get volumes online, and recover some of the data. We tested multiple recovery solutions and EaseUS did just as well as $600 software solutions. The server owner opted out of the $2000+ data recovery solution that could have gotten more, but I was quite impressed with this software.

Mind you I didn’t use the macOS version, but I’d recommend giving it a try.

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Thanks for all the comments and apologies for delay in replying (time zones) I will contact Apple Support and see where we go with that in the first instance. I have somewhat lost faith withTime Machine if it doesn’t back up Apples own icloud data…

Really sorry to hear that.

Each WWDC i wait for Apple to allow their customers to backup their Mac to iCloud. in 2024, timemachine just doesnt cut it. I want my mac backed up to my icloud.

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I doubt that will ever happen. Apple already spends hundreds of $millions each year for storage on AWS and Google.

I recommend Backblaze or Arq.

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I used DriveSavers three or four times between 1999 and 2015. They were always able to recover the data but it was very expensive.

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I do not understand this. If people can have over 2TB of their photos backed up to icloud, why can’t I have my 500gb macbook backed up… I am not saying it should be free. Use my icloud storage.

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iCloud is not like normal cloud storage (Dropbox, Google Drive, etc). Anything you put on it, except for photos and ‘desktop and documents’ uploaded via ‘Store in iCloud’, will sync back to your Mac.

I understand its not designed like that at the moment but Apple, being so innovative as they are, surely they can make it happen, assuming there is a will and the right motivation.

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I agree. Apple’s only been in the cloud storage business for 24 years, they might be ready to roll it out any day now. :wink:

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I have hope. if after 14 year, the iPad has a calculator app, there is hope for us all.

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And so far, they still haven’t gotten very good at it. iCloud would probably be better if Jobs had succeeded when he tried to buy Dropbox.

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I’ve used AWS, Dropbox, Google Drive, Backblaze B2, and OneDrive. And iCloud is consistently slower uploading and downloading than all of them.

“As of 2023, there are an estimated 1.46 billion active iPhone users worldwide”. Maybe that’s too many for iCloud to handle?

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Have you tried restoring the files from iCloud on the Web? I’ve had good success with that.

Additionally, if you have an iCloud back up from days (or hours) before the incident, perhaps you could just reinstall your 2015 MacBook from one of those iCloud back ups. I also had to try that once and I got all my files back.

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Even in the land of iCloud’s ‘sync’ nature, this should NOT result in iCloud deleting your data. You can delete an app from one device, then later install that app on another device and it will find the data in iCloud and restore it.

To delete the data in iCloud requires a separate step.

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Check your “exclude” list in TimeMachine to see if iCloud local folder is excluded from backup.

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