Those things should be restored to your device when you restore a backup. ICloud Backup will back up things like purchase history, device settings, app data, iMessage and text messages, and photos and videos. Although iCloud backs up your purchase history, it does not back up the content you've purchased. If you click the Options button, you will see a pop up window that contains additional options for backing up the data in the application.īelow is the pop up Options window for backing up iCloud Drive. Some applications will have an Options button that appears to the right of the application name, such as iCloud Drive. In other words, we can choose the applications on our Mac that we want to back up to iCloud and the data that will be synced to other programs. In the main part of the iCloud window, we can turn the features we want to use on or off. These features are basically the apps that iCloud will back up. If we click the Manage button, we can manage backups and buy more storage space. We'll talk more about family sharing later in this article. The Set Up Family button allows us to set up our iCloud to share the iTunes Store, App Store, and iBooks purchases with family. We can also share a family calendar and photos. If we want to view our account details, including security settings, we can click the Account Details button. We are already signed in using our Apple ID. When you do that, you will then see this window: To set up iCloud, go to System Preferences, then click on iCloud. Remember, iCloud is a cloud storage service that's used to back up and sync data. ICloud Drive allows you to save files that you create to the cloud and in your iCloud Drive. It is a file sharing service, and you can share the files you save to your iCloud drive with family, friends, co-workers, or anyone who you want to give access to a single or multiple files. iCloud is not a file sharing service similar to Dropbox or OneDrive. It's also what's used to sync some of your data to other Apple devices. ICloud is what you use to back up what is stored on your device, like the information you have in all your different applications and programs. Many people get confused when it comes to the difference between iCloud and iCloud Drive. Although we are going to cover both in this article, it's important that you know the difference between the two. The Difference Between iCloud and iCloud Drive The only types of disks you won't be able to erase are standard CD-ROM's or DVD's and the startup disk that contains the current System folder. If you want to erase a disk, such as a DVD, go to your Applications in the Finder window, then open the Utilities folder.Ĭlick the name of the disk in the left column (labeled #1 below), then click the Erase tab (labeled #2 below). Simply click on the disk you want to use, then press Restart to start your Mac from that disk. The startup disks appear in the area highlighted above. To do this, go to System Preferences>Startup Disk. If you want to have more than one startup disk, the only thing you need to do is tell your Mac which one you want to use to start the computer. Perhaps you want to have access to two different versions of OS X, or you want to use one as a backup disk. You can have more than one startup disk if you want. Your Mac looks for a startup disk every time you boot it up. The startup disk is located in a System folder, usually as part of your internal hard drive, and contains your operating system, application, and files. However, you can also use a DVD, external hard drive, or flash drive as a startup disk for your Mac. You can also click the Eject menulet in the Menu Bar or next to the disk's name in the Sidebar. To eject – or remove a disk, you can drag the icon to the trash or right click on the icon and choose File>Eject. If you want to see what's on the disk, all you have to do is double click on the icon. Whenever you insert a disk, an icon will show up either on your desktop, in the Computer window, or in the Sidebar. To liven it up a little, we'll also talk about iTunes at the end. In this article, we're going to talk about disks and drives. You can also save to a flash drive or an external hard drive. Whenever you save something to a computer, including your Mac, you save it either to a disk or a drive. Perhaps you save files to your hard drive or use your CD/DVD ROM drive to burn files to CD or DVD.