iCloud, Dropbox, Old Data, Time Machine

This is following, in a sense, on the iCloud backups vs Time Machine thread. Different, nevertheless.

Being a recent switcher from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion on two separate macs, one of them (iMac) being mostly used by my wife, I am discovering iCloud and wonder how better to use it in combination with my free Dropbox account. Looking at the root of my quite old machine (over 24 years old, starting with my Macintosh SE), I see:

• Desktop: 69 Mo;
• Documents: 63 Go (50 Go filed by calendar year and 13 Go not filed by year);
• Dropbox: 3.8 Go (mainly shared folders, with others or my office Windows computer);
• Other folders (Images, Music, Videos, etc are immaterial).

Also, as the previous poster, I am a Time Machine addict (based on a well oiled Time Capsule dedicated to two macs).

63 Go, the size of the Documents folder, far too big for iCloud free storage, is therefore not mirrored on iCloud yet.

As the permanent part of my Documents Folder is not so big (about 15 Go), adding to it the last three years (about 20 Go) would amount to about 40 Go "current" data. The rest being "old" data, not so necessary to retrieve from the other machine (or an hypothetical iphone or ipad).

Should I:

1. Buy iCloud capacity;
2. Buy Dropbox capacity;
3. Buy nothing and create another folder (Old Data) sitting on the MacBookPro and simply saved to the Time Capsule ?

How best to prepare for the future ?

Any better idea ?

TIA

Buy a 1 Tb or larger external HD, back up your (very) old files to that and delete them from your computer. I am assuming that when you write 16 Go, you mean 16 Gb ( 16 gigabytes). iCloud and Dropbox are great for sharing info across multiple devices and users but it is not a reliable archive and it costs money.
I tell everybody the same thing, get a BIG external HD, clone your computer so you can boot from your portable HD (in case of a major crash) or to restore to a new computer when required and save all the old files you don't use to an archive of your own design. This way if your computer crashes, and it will sooner or later you can continue working with your files almost immediately.

Bottom line, how long does it take to download a Tb of data from iCloud? Answer; about a week.

Go=Gigaoctet, equivalent to Gb. Go is a French construct. An Octet is 8 bits, just like a byte. The defenders of the French language refused to allow "byte" to enter the language, hence Go. You see it on packaging meant for sale in both the US and Canada, as well as France.

28 years old data slowing down the mac (iCloud, Dropbox, Old Data, Time Machine)

This is to summarize on the end of a long serie of actions I started in 2013 on this forum and concluded during the last 4 months.

My data trail traces back to Mac OS 4 to 7 (a 28 years old mac SE), with successive updates and 3 changes of computer with automated recovery of former data (Mac SE --> LC 475 --> iMac --> MacBook Pro).

It all took momentum when my recent MacBookPro's 320 GB internal HD became nearly full of rarely used old junk (20 GB left only). The spinning ball was spinning like crazy on my screen upon any click from my side.

Advice received was, among others:

• Buy a big external HD, clean-up your mess and divide by 2 the baggage of your internal HD;
• Do some housekeeping in the internal HD and the Time Capsule;
• Implement a serious back-up strategy involving a bootable clone in addition to the time Capsule;
• Defrag your HD by cloning back from your clone to the internal HD, or with iDefrag.

I did all of that and more, housecleaning added over 200 GB to the Time Capsule Data file, I lost two old drives and spent time trying to recover the contained data, learned to use CCC to make a bootable clone on my network, created a bunch of bootable thumb drives. I have not yet dared to wipe my 28 years old data well to restore it with whatever sure source, including a clone from a clone.

The spinning ball was still spinning on my screen.

So, this afternoon, as a final touch to this 4-months work, I ran a full 6 hours run of full defrag with iDefrag on a perfectly clean internal hard drive (full of crumbs of old stuff, still). Immediately after, the machine was new again. Glitches are gone and I do not see the spinning ball any more. Magic !!!

I owe this to all advice received on this forum. Thanks to all.