One Drive

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
How does it work?

I thought it was like a network drive that I have used in the past so I copied a few files onto it using my file manager thing on windows ten. Then it asked me to set Onedrive up which I did.

Then the files I had copied onto One drive said they syncing forever (there was a few MB there) and my internet connection overloaded. So I had to delete the files I had put onto one drive to get things going again.

Now my C drive directory structure seems to be duplicating itself in the One Drive directory all by itself which I don't really want as its absolutely full of crap.

WTF is going on? Why does it do that?

All I wanted to do was save the critical files on OneDrive? When the files appear under onedrive in file manager are they also on the C Drive and syncing to the cloud " as and when".

Does the one drive system automatically back files up that appear under for example Documents on the the C drive?

A right muddle.
 

Oat

Member
Location
Cheshire
You should be able to configure One Drive to only back up selected folders, but possibly it is defaulting to doing the Documents folder etc...

Strictly speaking it does not just back up files, it synchronises them, so you end up with a file version on your computer and a copy online on One Drive. You can work on either version and it will automatically update the other.

One problem I found was that One Drive will sometimes not be able to sync files from your computer is the whole address and file name is too long. So if you have lots of folders and subfolders, and then a long filename it will not sync. If this is an issue, it normally alerts you. Another problem I had was that sometimes Word file would just not complete syncing, and would just show as still syncing. I found that by opening the file and allowing Word to perform its normal spelling and grammar check of the file, would fix it.
 
One Drive is like a very very expensive and secure external hard drive being locked in a safe in your office.

Only the hard drive is owned by microsoft, and is locked away somewhere very very safe, in a dark, fire protected, air conditioned room with a near unbreakable power supply. And there aren't just one of them, there are thousands of hard drives living there, chilling out and keeping folks data.

And it is likely that your data is probably being stored in multiple locations on multiple drives, so even a Tomahawk missile hitting one particular building in say, Hawaii, won't destroy your data- because other copies exist in say, California. And Alaska. And Frankfurt.

Suffice to say it behaves very much like just another folder on your computer but is constantly updating itself to save your data. As I work on assignments using MS office apps, it is constantly saving itself again and again every few minutes. If my computer was destroyed in the next 10 minutes by a house fire or a suitcase nuke or a 3 year old hammering the keyboard, the files would remain safe and I can retrieve them having installed one drive on my phone. Get on any other internet connected PC, login to one drive and there are your files.

It is a bit like depositing £100 in your local bank as opposed to putting £100 in a shoebox under your bed.

Google, Apple and multiple other companies offer the exact same service using a similar app. OneDrive just happens to be the microsoft version that seems to work well natively with windows.

Dropbox is another.

There are also web site based services where you can upload data remotely and have it stored. OneDrive just happens to be a lot more user friendly and is nearly free in some cases. I get 1 TB of storage free just by paying for MS office, you could be doing academic work for years before you will create 1TB of work as most document files are tiny.

Here is a video of one of Google's data centres. It's basically a building designed to house harddrives.
 
How does it work?

I thought it was like a network drive that I have used in the past so I copied a few files onto it using my file manager thing on windows ten. Then it asked me to set Onedrive up which I did.

Then the files I had copied onto One drive said they syncing forever (there was a few MB there) and my internet connection overloaded. So I had to delete the files I had put onto one drive to get things going again.

Now my C drive directory structure seems to be duplicating itself in the One Drive directory all by itself which I don't really want as its absolutely full of crap.

WTF is going on? Why does it do that?

All I wanted to do was save the critical files on OneDrive? When the files appear under onedrive in file manager are they also on the C Drive and syncing to the cloud " as and when".

Does the one drive system automatically back files up that appear under for example Documents on the the C drive?

A right muddle.

The problem likely lies not with OneDrive but the settings you have set on Windows 10.

It will constantly sync with whatever alterations you are making to your files, if you have accidentally told it to store something that is being changed a lot, it will dutifully do this.

It is a bit like a network drive but is supposed to be a lot more user friendly than that.

As it is a web-based service it may not work well on very slow connections as it will probably saturate them quite easily. With my connection I would never know it was there.

I have been saving documents to OneDrive only, pretending it is a different drive entirely, I don't save it my documents and then expect OneDrive to copy it, that is not necessary.

Also, for the uninitiated: do not generate OneDrive links for other people unless you know them and are prepared to share the files in question. As a rule, the majority of users probably will never need to do this.
 
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DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
So if I move (drag and drop) an excel spreadsheet file to my one drive directory the system will then try to upload that file to the "secure remote server". Is this right? If I open the file using excel in the one drive on my PC then when I close it, it should save any mods to the remote server. Is this right?

If I merely copy an excel spreadsheet to the one drive on my PC then that copy will be uploaded to the remote server, but if I modify the original from which I made the copy then those mods wont be uploaded to the remote server. Is this right?

This is what I seem to have found by trying it out this afternoon.

Of course my slow internet connection means it takes about 3 minutes to sync or upload a 30kb excel spreadsheet which does kind of screw things up a bit.
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
The reason my internet connection fell over was because I copied some 1000 page workshop manuals to one drive and the uploads overloaded my internet connection. I had to delete them from the one drive directory on my PC to halt the upload and restore normal service. That is what seemed to happen.
 
So if I move (drag and drop) an excel spreadsheet file to my one drive directory the system will then try to upload that file to the "secure remote server". Is this right? If I open the file using excel in the one drive on my PC then when I close it, it should save any mods to the remote server. Is this right?

If I merely copy an excel spreadsheet to the one drive on my PC then that copy will be uploaded to the remote server, but if I modify the original from which I made the copy then those mods wont be uploaded to the remote server. Is this right?

This is what I seem to have found by trying it out this afternoon.

Of course my slow internet connection means it takes about 3 minutes to sync or upload a 30kb excel spreadsheet which does kind of screw things up a bit.


https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/onedrive-offline-files

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/17184/windows-10-onedrive

Unless I am completely wrong, (which I may well be as I have only used OneDrive for 4 months since buying the very latest MS Office) OneDrive does not store any files locally on your machine unless you ask it to (drop down box says 'always keep on this device'). I do not store any files locally whatsoever; I am creating MS office files and saving them directly to OneDrive instead. They are not being stored in my documents folder on the C drive or one a flash drive as you would need to if you did not use any cloud service.

As a result, I can now log into OneDrive, on virtually any smart device and get access to those files whenever I need to.

I can definitely see how having a slow internet connection might be a serious problem, in which case, a NAS drive or (decent) external hard drive might be a better bet.
 
The reason my internet connection fell over was because I copied some 1000 page workshop manuals to one drive and the uploads overloaded my internet connection. I had to delete them from the one drive directory on my PC to halt the upload and restore normal service. That is what seemed to happen.

Yeah, for something like that, I think flash drives or even burning them to DVD-R might be a good idea. DVD-Rs are very cheap, pretty foolproof and you can make several copies for not a lot of money.
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
Thanks.

But imagine you are working on an excel spreadsheet that you are storing solely on OneDrive. You have made lots of mods. You close and it automatically saves to OneDrive. It must surely be cached somewhere on your PC then is uploaded, or synced. With my slow connection it is still syncing 3 minutes after I have closed the file. So there must be at least temporary local storage even if you appear to be using OneDrive directly.
 
Thanks.

But imagine you are working on an excel spreadsheet that you are storing solely on OneDrive. You have made lots of mods. You close and it automatically saves to OneDrive. It must surely be cached somewhere on your PC then is uploaded, or synced. With my slow connection it is still syncing 3 minutes after I have closed the file. So there must be at least temporary local storage even if you appear to be using OneDrive directly.

It undoubtedly is cached somewhere temporarily, only on your connection it is likely being stored for a lot longer than normal. If you use MS office applications with OneDrive it autosaves them as you go. It definitely does work as you suggest because if you look in the one drive folder it tells you what is synced and what is being synced and what is waiting to be synced. It also tells you what OneDrive is up to in the system tray in the bottom right corner.
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
It undoubtedly is cached somewhere temporarily, only on your connection it is likely being stored for a lot longer than normal. If you use MS office applications with OneDrive it autosaves them as you go. It definitely does work as you suggest because if you look in the one drive folder it tells you what is synced and what is being synced and what is waiting to be synced. It also tells you what OneDrive is up to in the system tray in the bottom right corner.

Oh yes. Found the cloud icon at bottom right along with that info.

I think I am getting to grips with it.

To all intents and purposes I can use it as just another drive on my PC but the storage is on the net and secure.

The main problem for me is that the speed of uploading to the OneDrive on the net is very slow so it can't really cope with large files without overloading and killing my internet connection. So its unwise to put large files on the Onedrive most particularly if they are regularly modified.

Thanks for your help.
 

milkloss

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
East Sussex
Yeah, for something like that, I think flash drives or even burning them to DVD-R might be a good idea. DVD-Rs are very cheap, pretty foolproof and you can make several copies for not a lot of money.

Would steer clear of dvds imo. They don’t last much better than a floppy in my experience. I’ve got a lot that are unreadable.
 

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