If you were to go for the 1tb icloud drive i don't see an issue if your macbook has a smaller drive. using an external drive, time machine just removes older backups once the external gets full, i would imagine the same would happen with icloud drive.. I agree that backup via icloud is a better experience. i'm sure apple feels the same way. long term i'd wager that time machine will be phased out in favor of application data being synced via icloud ala ios.. Yes there is, i do this on my mac mini (so that all icloud drive files are locally synced and therefore backed up in time machine). system preferences > icloud click the options button for icloud drive, make sure optimize mac storage is not checked. see screenshot..
Locate backups of your iphone, ipad, and ipod touch
Idrive makes life nice and simple for apple users, as it supports backups directly from your time machine drive. using a process designed specifically for time machine users, idrive creates a mirror of your saved content in the cloud, so that every time a change is made to your drive, it’s updated online too.. I'll stick with time machine for one main reason: speed. sure, you can thrown down for 250-500gb of cloud storage from apple, but even if you sit at the apple store all day, you won't be able to restore that machine over wifi.. Dolly drive is a service that provides exactly the same type of thorough backup that time machine offers except you back up to the cloud using dolly drive's user interface..
