How to upload files from external hard drive to creative cloud without storing them locally on Mac

Hi all, sorry if this has already been asked, I wasn't able to find a relevant thread by searching.

I'm trying to use my creative cloud storage (1tb) as my cloud backup of my hard drive which contains pretty much all my photos from the past 6 years. When I try to upload using the creative cloud app on mac I get an error telling me that I do not have enough free disk space on my computer.

My goal, as stated, is to backup my hard drive to the cloud without saving the entire hard drive to my laptop, which obviously isn't possible or desirable.

How can I backup the photos from this drive to the cloud without saving them to my computer? That seems like the entire point of cloud storage.