OneDrive Question

Does Folks move Onedrive to another drive or keep it as Default Folder?

For years I've always moved it to my Large Storage Drive, as i was so afraid of too many writes to my NVMe Drive or Sata SSDS in the past.

Curious for the moment? i can always clean up my Onedrive and go ahead and try it as default sometime, might take a bit too clean up though lol

You do not make it clear but imply your large storage is an HDD.

This is the last place I would move onedrive folders to.

There is not much point in moving it unless you wish to keep files on local drive as well as online (to save space on C drive).

All my onedrive files are setup as files on demand and are only online (with placeholders in effect on local drive).

Also, most onedrive files are only written once and this will have minimal impact on drive live.

I would only move the folders if I had limited space on C drive due to overall drive's limited capacity to allow some headroom for downloading online files on demand.

Some people do not use files on demand preferring a copy locally as well as online. In that case, moving folder to another drive could be attractive depending on drive capacities.

@cereberus

Yes the Storage drive currently is 4TB WD Black HDD Drive, C M.2 is NVMe 500GB currently Samsung 970 Evo Plus, and yes i do keep the Files Online only, and typically don't download them much.

I moved it after each clean install ever since when i used to have 250GB Boot SSD and now 500GB NVMe Boot Drive

Videos not often stored on there, unless i share a Game DVR Clip, but i don't do that to often lately

Who Knows maybe for Birthday in February i'll get a Larger M.2 NVMe for Birthday lol, then fun task of getting to NVMe slot after upgrading CPU Cooler since i installed the 500GB one lol.

if i can find a Gen 3 One for a Good price---Motherboard unforuately doesn't support PCie 4.0 or 5.0. Maybe I'll finally upgrade to 1TB Boot NVMe, (I've always went small drive size for Boot NVMe, as typically didn't have much on it besides Windows and small light programs

bikemanI7 said:

if i can find a Gen 3 One for a Good price

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Don't buy a gen 3 drive. Buy a gen 4 which is backward compatible to gen 3 and works great even though it currently runs at gen 3 speed. I know, I just did it.. By doing so if you ever get a gen 4 or 5 mobo, you'll have a drive capable of faster speeds that will make a good storage drive. Before Christmas Amazon slashed prices on most gen 4 m.2 drives. Some of those sales are still going on but they won't last long.

bikemanI7 said:

Does Folks move Onedrive to another drive ...?

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Another partition will do, so after reinstall all files are ready, including icons. It also makes system backups smaller.

@glasskuter

Well already spent Christmas Gift card, most likely won't have another til Birthday in February lol

For years i moved my OneDrive folder immediately over to HDD Drive as was terrified for a while of writes to M.2 NVMe lol and before that my Sata drive, used to move even User folder default folders--Desktop, Documents, Pictures, Music, Videos lol even to the storage drive immediately after finished a clean install of Windows lol

Hence why my current 500GB M.2 NVMe only has 44.9TB written onto it, purchased December 25th 2020, installed a few days after lol

bikemanI7 said:

Hence why my current 500GB M.2 NVMe only has 44.9TB written onto it, purchased December 25th 2020

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Mine 477GB disk has only 31TB written to it thanks to ramdisk, after 4 and half years.

I don't keep onedrive on my c drive, or any drive that I would image. Restoring an image with onedrive files probably doesn't work the way you expect it to.

Here is example. You build computer, install os, put on drivers and updates on Monday. You have 10 files in one drive local (and synced to cloud)and you use macrium to image your system. On Tuesday and Wednesday you add a total of 10 more files to onedrive. However, on Thursday you are fussing with the registry and now you bsod on boot up and cannot get it working. So, you restore your backup from Monday. What does your one drive look like? Do you get all of the files synced back from the onedrive in the cloud (all 20),or do you have 10 files in the local and 10 files deleted in the cloud? The latter is what happens. Your local onedrive is set back to how it was on Monday, and the cloud sync assumes you must have deleted the other 10 files, so they get wiped on the cloud. (Well, technically they are moved to cloud recycle bin...but you have to go find them and be cognizant that it happened).

For this reason, my onedrive resides on a drive or partition I do not image and restore.

pparks1 said:

I don't keep onedrive on my c drive, or any drive that I would image. Restoring an image with onedrive files probably doesn't work the way you expect it to.

Here is example. You build computer, install os, put on drivers and updates on Monday. You have 10 files in one drive local (and synced to cloud)and you use macrium to image your system. On Tuesday and Wednesday you add a total of 10 more files to onedrive. However, on Thursday you are fussing with the registry and now you bsod on boot up and cannot get it working. So, you restore your backup from Monday. What does your one drive look like? Do you get all of the files synced back from the onedrive in the cloud (all 20),or do you have 10 files in the local and 10 files deleted in the cloud? The latter is what happens. Your local onedrive is set back to how it was on Monday, and the cloud sync assumes you must have deleted the other 10 files, so they get wiped on the cloud. (Well, technically they are moved to cloud recycle bin...but you have to go find them and be cognizant that it happened).

For this reason, my onedrive resides on a drive or partition I do not image and restore.

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I've used OneDrive for 15 years. I always have two computers configured and running. If I haven't used my backup computer for a week, and this often happens, when I turn on the backup computer with week old data, the OneDrive online data updates the backup computer. If you restore a Macrium backup that is older than what is on OneDrive cloud, the same thing should occur. The newest OneDrive cloud files will update the older Macrium restored files.

It is my experience with OneDrive and using two computers that the file with the newest date/time stamp will update older files, no matter if it's newer local files updating older cloud files or newer cloud files updating older local files.

pparks1 said:

I don't keep onedrive on my c drive, or any drive that I would image. Restoring an image with onedrive files probably doesn't work the way you expect it to.

Here is example. You build computer, install os, put on drivers and updates on Monday. You have 10 files in one drive local (and synced to cloud)and you use macrium to image your system. On Tuesday and Wednesday you add a total of 10 more files to onedrive. However, on Thursday you are fussing with the registry and now you bsod on boot up and cannot get it working. So, you restore your backup from Monday. What does your one drive look like? Do you get all of the files synced back from the onedrive in the cloud (all 20),or do you have 10 files in the local and 10 files deleted in the cloud? The latter is what happens. Your local onedrive is set back to how it was on Monday, and the cloud sync assumes you must have deleted the other 10 files, so they get wiped on the cloud. (Well, technically they are moved to cloud recycle bin...but you have to go find them and be cognizant that it happened).

For this reason, my onedrive resides on a drive or partition I do not image and restore.

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System Restore would not create such a mess, methinks. For similar reasons, I'm considering creating weekly restore points, but System Restore has its naysayers too.

TraderGary said:

I've used OneDrive for 15 years. I always have two computers configured and running. If I haven't used my backup computer for a week, and this often happens, when I turn on the backup computer with week old data, the OneDrive online data updates the backup computer. If you restore a Macrium backup that is older than what is on OneDrive cloud, the same thing should occur. The newest OneDrive cloud files will update the older Macrium restored files.

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That's exactly what you think would occur and exactly what I expected to occur. However in the scenario that I presented, that is not what happens. I've tested it many times and demonstrated it in a few different threads. Here was my post from a 3 years ago on the tenforums where I first stumbled upon this and thought it was odd. (OneDrive files going away after Macrium Restore - Windows 10 Help Forums).

I believe the issues stems from the onedrive client. As you put new files on your computer, the one drive client "knows" about "these" files and will sync them to the cloud. And if the file in the cloud gets updated from another source, it will then pull those files down as the client still knows about the local file and it can tell that the cloud source has been modified.

However, in the example I gave, when you restore that Macrium image, and you put your computer back to Monday...The local onedrive client "only" knows about those 10 files that existed at that very moment in time. So, essentially, as far as the onedrive local client is concerned, you have "deleted" 10 files from the local computer, and thus it signals the cloud that the files have been removed from the source, hence the cloud side syncs those changes and puts those files in the cloud recycle bin.

TraderGary said:

TraderGary said:

It is my experience with OneDrive and using two computers that the file with the newest date/time stamp will update older files, no matter if it's newer local files updating older cloud files or newer cloud files updating older local files.

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Click to expand...

With multiple computers, that is exactly what happens. And it syncs between the 2 of them.

If you created a file on computer A, and took an image, then allowed it to sync to the cloud, it would show as available on computer B. If you then created file2 and file3 on computer A, they would show up as available on computer B. But if you restored Computer A, back to that Macrium image you took previously the onedrive client would know that it only had the 1 file, and would signal to the cloud that the files have been removed from the local file system and should be removed from the cloud. it will end up in the cloud recycle bin. Perhaps if you had accessed the file from B, or modified it from B, it would then be "known" to the cloud with ownership to B and thus show as available to A still after the macrium restore.

I'm going to test that in a VM, I will report back later with results.

pparks1 said:

So, you restore your backup from Monday. What does your one drive look like? Do you get all of the files synced back from the onedrive in the cloud (all 20),or do you have 10 files in the local and 10 files deleted in the cloud? The latter is what happens. Your local onedrive is set back to how it was on Monday, and the cloud sync assumes you must have deleted the other 10 files, so they get wiped on the cloud. (Well, technically they are moved to cloud recycle bin...but you have to go find them and be cognizant that it happened).

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That's interesting.

That said, I've wiped (reinstalled the OS) my PC many times, and never noticed the online OneDrive files get wiped. Will have to pay special attention to that next time I reinstall the OS.

pparks1 said:

For this reason, my onedrive resides on a drive or partition I do not image and restore.

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I guess that's why I also backup my OneDrive folder, which is always left at its default location on "C" drive.

TraderGary said:

I've used OneDrive for 15 years. I always have two computers configured and running. If I haven't used my backup computer for a week, and this often happens, when I turn on the backup computer with week old data, the OneDrive online data updates the backup computer. If you restore a Macrium backup that is older than what is on OneDrive cloud, the same thing should occur. The newest OneDrive cloud files will update the older Macrium restored files.

It is my experience with OneDrive and using two computers that the file with the newest date/time stamp will update older files, no matter if it's newer local files updating older cloud files or newer cloud files updating older local files.

Click to expand...

That's my understanding as well, so I'm with you on this.

That said, I don't use images (Macrium). If my PC is in such a bad state, I reinstall the OS, and restore my backup files using Acronis.

That's me.

WooHooo....great news to report. It seems Microsoft has fixed this behavior.

I started testing it again, with 2 Windows 11 machines. When I restored the image on PC1, it shows the 2 files I had originally created and they have a checkmark and are stored local on the C drive of this computer. However, the 2 additional files I had created after taking my image are now showing on PC1....but this time with a cloud icon showing that they are only on the cloud but available to this machine if I click on them.

I'm hoping this fix is in the actual Onedrive client...as the last time I tested I was on Windows 10. This test was performed with two Windows 11 PC's.

Well decided to leave My OneDrive folder like its setup now, if in the future i decide to upgrade C M.2 NvMe to maybe 1TB, from 500GB, then i might see about leaving it on that drive.

But since i do Macrium Images for my backups--might just leave it on the 4TB storage drive anyways.

2nd PC (Laptop)
only has 128GB Boot NvMe for that System, that system must be on the Storage drive, til someday i get the stripped screw out, and get that system cleaned up (fans) battery replaced, and drives and memory upgraded at some point

Anyhow think i should be fine hopefully