Solved Home folder on OneDrive online

Windows 11 V25H2.

I am missing some basic understanding about OneDrive.
I do not synch anything to OneDrive, but do use OneDrive as an extra backup for some folders (mostly pictures). I was using NeroBackitup for this, until it stopped working.

When I go online to OneDrive, I can see the files that have been backed up under the My Files folder. I can also see them on my own computer under the OneDrive icon.

However, there are also a few files in the Home folder online (the folder that is above My Files). I can open them, but can't seem to remove them. I don't need them there, as all the files are already in My Files.

I noticed that if I click on an item on my own computer under the expanded OneDrive icon, it changes from a blue cloud to a green tick and says that the file is available one my own computer. it also them appears in the Home folder online. I can't see any reference to the files in the online Home folder on my own computer, so where are they being stored if they are on my own computer? Does not make sense to me.

Hoping to get some clarification on this.

OK, pseymour, that answers the question. I had not spotted that these are just files that are recently looked at.
I have now learned about the Free Up Space option, which seems to be the reverse of Always Keep on My Device.
I am slightly surprised that I can click on an item to keep it on my device, since I have explicitly stated in the OneDrive options that I do not want to Synch any folders. I guess this overrides that, but it would be too easy to click on a folder by mistake and suddenly find that all the files in the folder are downloaded to my computer - when they are already on the computer in the original place that I backed them up from.

I'll close this thread now.

I get what you're saying, but I don't have an answer. I only use OneDrive in an enterprise environment, and it's a little different. Maybe Dr. @TraderGary has an answer.

OneDrive synchronizes everything kept in your local OneDrive folder with cloud OneDrive.

C:\username\YourUserName\OneDrive

If you don't want a file or folder synchronized to cloud OneDrive, don't keep it in your local OneDrive folder.

The bottom line is simply that anything kept in the local OneDrive folder is kept synchronized with cloud OneDrive.

I use OneDrive as the off-site component of my 3-2-1 backup strategy. I keep all my data and photos in my OneDrive folder. I keep Files On Demand turned OFF. This keeps a real-time mirror of everything in the local OneDrive folder on both of my computers as they both log in to the same Microsoft Account. I then make a daily Macrium Reflect image backup of my main computer. That's my 3-2-1 Backup Strategy. 3 copies of my data using 2 different media types 1 of which must always be offsite.

Here's a little batch to unpin the files in a certain folder, so they won't take up space.

TraderGary,

Thanks for taking the time to reply. I think I have a better understanding of what is going on now.
I stopped synching to OneDrive long ago and I have specifically set the OneDrive options to not synchronise Documents, Pictures, Desktop, Music and Videos in the Manage Backup option of OneDrive, so all my source files are kept in normal directories on my computer well away from OneDrive.

The OneDrive thingy on my computer is only showing what is in OneDrive Online and I only keep the files online as an extra backup for my Pictures say.
So, there is nothing really to synchronise unless by mistake I have clicked on an item to create a local copy - which I must have done several times - which was the reason for my original question. Any change in Pictures (the real folder) say, do not get copied to OneDrive unless I manually put them there (or use NeroBackitup - if I can ever get it to work again).

As a test, I edited one of the files under the OneDrive thingy (not sure what to call it). Of course it was editing the online copy, which I could duly see when I went online to my OneDrive folder. The real source file in the main folder of my computer was untouched.

p.s. I also have my own backup strategy, which consists of Incremental backups, Periodic Full backups and manual backups of specific folders to External Hard drives / USB drives and even Blu-Ray discs. I only really use OneDrive as an extra, primarily for Pictures, so I can see them on my other devices when online.

Years ago, when we were away from home, we had a home robbery. When we arrived back home, our back door had been kicked in, and all our devices and my wife's jewelry had been stolen. They took my computers and my backup drives. I had nothing left. I was using OneDrive for all my data and photos. I bought a new computer, signed in to Windows, and all my data was instantly there as if nothing ever happened. I've been a firm believer in having one of my backups always being off-site ever since.

TraderGary said:

Years ago, when we were away from home, we had a home robbery. When we arrived back home, our back door had been kicked in, and all our devices and my wife's jewellery had been stolen. They took my computers and my backup drives. I had nothing left. I was using OneDrive for all my data and photos. I bought a new computer, signed in to Windows, and all my data was instantly there as if nothing ever happened. I've been a firm believer in having one of my backups always being off-site ever since.

Click to expand...

Yes, the off-site strategy is a good one. At least my photos are off-site on OneDrive and a few other files that I would not want to loose.
I am reluctant to store anything of value in the cloud though - anything financial etc - so much seems to be hacked these days. Also, I worry that if everything was actually inside the OneDrive folder as the real directory, if I accidentally deleted something on OneDrive online it would disappear on my own computer. Or even worse, if something went wrong with OneDrive and all the data was lost. I suppose Microsoft has got numerous backups of backups to prevent that sort of thing happening.

Perhaps I am being too paranoid about things and should just trust OneDrive!

MCHome said:

Yes, the off-site strategy is a good one. At least my photos are off-site on OneDrive and a few other files that I would not want to loose.
I am reluctant to store anything of value in the cloud though - anything financial etc - so much seems to be hacked these days. Also, I worry that if everything was actually inside the OneDrive folder as the real directory, if I accidentally deleted something on OneDrive online it would disappear on my own computer. Or even worse, if something went wrong with OneDrive and all the data was lost. I suppose Microsoft has got numerous backups of backups to prevent that sort of thing happening.

Click to expand...

Doing some research on how Microsoft utilizes redundancy on multiple data centers gave me a good bit of confidence.

MCHome said:

Perhaps I am being too paranoid about things and should just trust OneDrive!

Click to expand...

I might very well be as paranoid as you are. I can't fully trust any single method. The rest of my backup strategy utilizes making complete Macrium Reflect drive images. I make daily drive images every night before shutting down alternating on three 4TB Samsung T9 portable SSD drives. I have complete image backups going back daily for over six weeks. I can completely restore my entire system from any day. I'm protected from doing anything stupid. And the beauty of OneDrive is I'm always completely up to date in real-time on whatever I'm working on.

Now I remember why I stopped using OneDrive to Synch.

I just tried to manually upload some photos that I have changed that have not been copied to OneDrive using Nero BackItUp.
I did a hundred maybe, then it stopped - it just says "Preparing to Upload" with the OneDrive icon saying "Uploading 0.0 KB of 1.3 GB at 0.0 KB/s, 90 files remaining". The message has not changed for five minutes. Maybe it will resume later?
If I Exit OneDrive, then restart it it will do another few hundred and stop.
I also remember that OneDrive had problems uploading certain files, including Desktop.ini files and other system files.

I am guessing that you have not had such problems since you Synch on a regular basis.

Can't believe I am the only person in the world that has this problem - me being paranoid again!

MCHome said:

Now I remember why I stopped using OneDrive to Synch.

I just tried to manually upload some photos that I have changed that have not been copied to OneDrive using Nero BackItUp.
I did a hundred maybe, then it stopped - it just says "Preparing to Upload" with the OneDrive icon saying "Uploading 0.0 KB of 1.3 GB at 0.0 KB/s, 90 files remaining". The message has not changed for five minutes. Maybe it will resume later?
If I Exit OneDrive, then restart it it will do another few hundred and stop.
I also remember that OneDrive had problems uploading certain files, including Desktop.ini files and other system files.

I am guessing that you have not had such problems since you Synch on a regular basis.

Can't believe I am the only person in the world that has this problem - me being paranoid again!

Click to expand...

Whenever I do a clean install or I'm configuring a new computer I will see what you're describing if I sit and watch it. A fresh, new synch of my OneDrive takes about four hours to complete. The current size of my OneDrive is 161 GB. After the initial sync finishes, synching individual files happens in just seconds and essentially feels like real-time.

What's your Internet speed?

Thanks for your reply. I actually deleted my picture folder in OneDrive and then copied from my source file picture folder into the OneDrive folder on my computer. Then started OneDrive on my computer to start the upload process. This now completed without a hitch in about 10 minutes if I recall - about 10GB of data. My internet download speed is 1GB and upload is about 100MB.
Maybe the problem was that it was having to rename files or some sort of conflict with existing files. At least this way, I know I have only got one copy of each photo, not multiple.
After the process was complete I right clicked the Free Up Space button to remove the copies from my PC.
I'm hoping Nero will fix the BackitUp problem so I can get back to using that, but I now realise there is a problem with this in that it does not delete old photos I have deleted on my computer.
What I would really like is for OneDrive to do a one-way synch, i.e. copy/update/delete files online so it is an exact match of what is on my computer.
I never want changing files online to go back the other way. I believe OneDrive does not offer this option - not sure why not as I know other backup providers do allow this - i.e. a full one-way synch.

p.s. My first computing job was back in 1976 writing code in Assembler on PDP 11's - with 32k of memory. How things have changed - I've got 64GB on this computer and 4TB of storage space!

OneDrive is always keeping everything in your OneDrive folder in complete sync with cloud OneDrive at all times. Whether actual physical files are kept locally in your OneDrive folder is controlled by whether you set Files On Demand to ON or OFF. If Files On Demand is set to ON, and that's the default, what you are seeing in File Explorer is just a place holder file name. The actual physical file is only local if you click on the file name to actually use it for something. That's why it's called Files On Demand. This is what confuses most people when using OneDrive.

I prefer to always set Files On Demand to OFF. That way all my files are kept locally identical with cloud OneDrive. That way when I make my nightly Macrium Reflect X image backup I'm backing up my complete OneDrive. I always want all local files in my OneDrive folder to always be identical to cloud OneDrive.