The original post: /r/datahoarder by /u/because_im_stupid_ok on 2025-01-16 12:29:25.
TLDR:
- How can we manage large files if we can't sort them on the phone or in any iCloud interface?
- Is there any way to maintain a minimum amount of free local storage? (Without downloading big files right before we need them so as to force the phone to offload system data, photos, and videos?).
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Details (and a rant) that you don't need to read:
I'm a hobby photographer who is international a lot. Some days I need 2-3GBs, some days 50.
- I often retrieve / use photos from the beginning of time until now, and happily pay Apple for 2TB of sync.
- I'm at about 1.8TB, with 100k photos and 15k videos. I meticulously switch between RAW for photos that don't need it, have great file hygiene, no duplicates, and if I were to spend days combing I could probably reclaim 50-100GBs. It's just not worth my time and the decision fatigue.
- What I really want to do is identify the occasional 4k video that runs upward of 100GB's, then offload and delete them from iCloud. This would reclaim 300-500GBs.
This should be easy, right? And yet, here we are.
- Can't sort by file size: In two thousand and twenty five, we (still) can't sort our photos and videos on an iPhone or in iCloud, whether on mobile or desktop. Forget the hoverboards we were promised. I'll settle for a basic feature we've had since before we began playing the gorillias-throwing-exploding-bananas game on DOS.
- Can't maintain a minimum amount of storage locally: So I get that this is niche, but international travel is when I need local storage the most. Since the iPhone manages free space adaptively I can't choose to reserve a set amount. Normally this doesn't matter since domestic data is various flavors of "unlimited". But with e-sims at $15-30 per 10GB's when abroad ... cell sync adds up. So how do I keep X amount of storage locally without downloading a bunch of Netflix videos in the morning so as to force the issue artificially?
Crazy Pills:
Apple will throw an option sometimes to see your largest files as part of a warning, then remove it when it sees fit. It's the hallmark of an abusive relationship. I've read dozens of threads that echo the same behavior. I get it, Apple's biggest margins include iCloud. And the next tier from 2TB is 6TB, for a straight 3x the cost (all while, for most people, most remains unused for years).
My setup:
I have two, 2-bay Synology NAS boxes. The NAS's feed into a mini PC as the second local redundancy for a total of 24TB. This mini PC is then backed by Backblaze. And my super important things are air-gapped in a second location. I've been backing up DLSR's since the 2000s without issue. iCloud has just been this black box that I knew would explode on me one day, since it's not a proper, logical filesystem. And I admit I fell into the "it just works" trap and kept putting it off.
But today, it ends.
But let's be honest ... probably not.