Microsoft One drive confusion.

[Chuffedmonkey]

As the title, I am confused how this works and I hope there is an easy fix.

Wife has a fairly good laptop, specs are good but it only has a 256 SSD drive. She know has a problem that she can't update a game because there is not enough memory. She has a 1TB One drive via Microsoft 365 but it seems both drives mirror each other. One drive holds the same data as her hard drive.

I guess I am asking, how do I stop them mirroring each other so the One drive holds the data to free up the SSD space?

[joropug]

If I remember rightly , you right click the folder and there are some options as to whether the files are stored locally or in the cloud.

[_-XXXX-_]

I've read your post..several times while pissed.

The "problem" isn't with one drive!!

[Fore Left]

You need to turn on files on demand;

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/save-di...

[Captain_Morgan]

Obviously you should ensure you / she has a backup of the data before turning on files on demand.

[Turtle Shed]

I'd take Onedrive out of the equation.

Memory sticks cost peanuts and upgrading the laptop to a 1Tb SSD won't break the bank either.

[Baldchap]

In my experience, for many users this and Google Drive are a really good way of not knowing where files are and rather than simplifying backup actually can result in loss of data due to user error.

Proceed carefully. The suggestion of a USB drive backup before doing anything is a very good one unless you both know 100% what you are doing.

[Chuffedmonkey]

Thanks for the reply's.

We have purchased an external drive to move the files from the SSD.

I just cant figure out the point of OneDrive if it cant be used seperatley to store files from the SSD. Back in the day I used Dropbox and I could simply put files into that and they would stay there. If she deletes stuff from her SSD drive it removes them from One drive too.

[bigpriest]

Chuffedmonkey said:

Thanks for the reply's.

We have purchased an external drive to move the files from the SSD.

I just cant figure out the point of OneDrive if it cant be used seperatley to store files from the SSD. Back in the day I used Dropbox and I could simply put files into that and they would stay there. If she deletes stuff from her SSD drive it removes them from One drive too.

A sync utility does exactly that - keeps an online copy of your files within selected folders. Because it's sync and not backup it will delete the files online as you delete them locally. You can choose which folders to include in the sync so that you don't end up using all the online space.

[SV_WDC]

Chuffedmonkey said:

Thanks for the reply's.

We have purchased an external drive to move the files from the SSD.

I just cant figure out the point of OneDrive if it cant be used seperatley to store files from the SSD. Back in the day I used Dropbox and I could simply put files into that and they would stay there. If she deletes stuff from her SSD drive it removes them from One drive too.

Try the link Fore Lift posted. You can set it so files are kept online only and this frees up space on your PC. It's what I do; there are several gigs worth of files in the cloud and not on my machine. However, it is possible to have a mirroring mode enabled which means any files deleted on your machine are also deleted in the cloud. If you ever do this though there is a recycle bin on OneDrive, so you can normally recover the files within 30 day period

[Sheepshanks]

bigpriest said:

A sync utility does exactly that - keeps an online copy of your files within selected folders. Because it's sync and not backup it will delete the files online as you delete them locally. You can choose which folders to include in the sync so that you don't end up using all the online space.

I recall this being obvious in Windows 10 - you just selected the folders you wanted to sync. However was looking at OneDrive on abWindows 11 machine yesterday and it really wasn’t obvious at all, there didn’t seem to be the same folder by folder selection options.

[Captain_Morgan]

Chuffedmonkey said:

Thanks for the reply's.

We have purchased an external drive to move the files from the SSD.

I just cant figure out the point of OneDrive if it cant be used seperatley to store files from the SSD. Back in the day I used Dropbox and I could simply put files into that and they would stay there. If she deletes stuff from her SSD drive it removes them from One drive too.

As was said earlier you need to use files on demand option.

An issue is if you move the files to only be on one drive cloud what happens if you lose access to one drive or you delete some files but don’t realise in the 30 day retention period or the machine is infected with ransomware?

[bigpriest]

Sheepshanks said:

bigpriest said:

A sync utility does exactly that - keeps an online copy of your files within selected folders. Because it's sync and not backup it will delete the files online as you delete them locally. You can choose which folders to include in the sync so that you don't end up using all the online space.

I recall this being obvious in Windows 10 - you just selected the folders you wanted to sync. However was looking at OneDrive on abWindows 11 machine yesterday and it really wasn’t obvious at all, there didn’t seem to be the same folder by folder selection options.

The easy way is in Windows Explorer - don't save anything into the folders underneath "One Drive" and they won't be synced.

Also Notification area > One Drive Cloud Icon > Settings Cog > Settings > Account > Choose Folders

(Terrible user experience)