@@askleonotenboom that's what I understood at the beginning of the clip and at the end I wasn't sure anymore. Onedrive behaves strangely, it caused me trouble long before I found out about it here from you... thanks. Onedrive cloud makes me refrain from using it, except for what is strictly necessary, being afraid losing any data.
I recently had a client who bought a new laptop from Walmart and asked me to set it up for them. They wanted to create a Microsoft account and use it to log in. (Against my advice) They created the account, logged in, and a feature was automatically enabled without any action from either of us. (I immediately disabled OneDrive backups after explaining it to them.) This means that some people are encountering this feature as an opt-out, rather than opt-in, depending on the PC manufacturer. Thanks for the video explaining the issue, this will be an invaluable tool to direct clients to instead of explaining it.
My experience is that it really is an opt-in, but it's positioned in such a way that you don't realize you don't have to, it doesn't explain what will happen if you do, and it's often presented in a way that doesn't mention OneDrive AT ALL. It's opt-in, but for all intents and purposes it acts like an opt-out, but that's after the damage has been done.
I bought a new hp laptop specifically to run my laser engraver. Spent the first day getting rid of all the preloaded garbage that came with it including onedrive. It must be costing microsoft millions to operate the "free" onedrive system and since I am in the nothing is ever free camp it makes me wonder what their real motive is. My backups are either on external hard drives, usb sticks or sd cards.
@@rickgibson7876 All modern windows builds are automatically built with OneDrive. If you delete it and later install Microsoft 365, OneDrive will be reinstalled.
I've been avoiding one drive since long before I knew of Leo. It's reassuring to know that Leo has come to the same conclusions about one drive that I did long ago.
Eighteen-thirtythree on the video, the right advice! Create non-standard folder. And for usage convenience, they might be on the machine's Desktop folder.
We, my wife and I, have a Microsoft 365 Family account. We both have one Windows 10 and one Windows 11 PC each . My wife uses the same login on both of her PCs so I will tell her about the potential issues Leo has explained so clearly. I have two separate Microsoft accounts, one was for a business, now closed, the other my personal account. I only use one account on each PC - Family edition allows up to six accounts each with 1TB of storage. I am, therefore, not going to have the problem Leo explained in his video. I am less and less impressed with the direction Microsoft are taking for the home user. Effectively they want to push everything into the cloud, like Google of course, but making it less user friendly.
Nice information. I had OneDrive eliminate my entire documents folder on my laptop without any cloud backup. How do I say thank you? Going forward after a clean reinstall, I removed OneDrive from this PC. I would only access OneDrive through the web interface in the future - if I decide to use it at all. I prefer to do my own manual backups to other less intrusive online providers and personal local physical backups.
brilliant clear explanations. I won't be using either Microsoft accounts, or Windows 11. Windows 10/local a/c s and then onto Linux and/or ChromeOS on Chromebook for me
One Drive is the first thing I disable and uninstall in a Windows Installation. My personal files are on a separate drive from Windows and I access them 90% of the time from Linux Mint. I try to keep them as far away from Windows as possible.
Hi Leo. I have disabled OneDrive (it no longer starts with Windows 11), and unlinked it. BUT - my ONLY Desktop, and the one that shows files/folders on my "home" screen is the C:/Users/Geoff Phillips/OneDrive/Desktop one. In your video, it is the original non-OneDrive desktop that returns. What might be going on with my machine. I'd prefer not to have OneDrive mentioned in my folder paths!
Thanks to your video I was able to untangle a couple knots that Microsoft had put into play. I noticed something you hadn't mentioned: the Public Desktop. As I was flipping the desktop back to my C: drive locally, I noticed that not all the desktop items were in the Desktop folders. Some of the items that appeared on my desktop screen weren't in either Desktop folder. I found them in the Users\Public\Public Desktop folder. Public Desktop is NOT synced to the OneDrive folder. How they got there? My guess it's due to my tendency to install apps as accessible to Any\All users instead of just my regular userid. I'm the only one who has physical access to my personal computers, so I haven't thought about the implications of this practice.
What I hate about Microsoft is not respecting user choices. Apple too by default turns on iCloud backup but once you turn it off it doesn't pester you to start backing up again the way Microsoft does.
Windows wants OneDrive to have your desktop and *_other system folders_* on it *_instead_* of on your computer. It was ON by default on my Win 11 home PC. It was a real PITA to get rid of it. It also was telling me it was full and I needed to upgrade to a paid version to keep going. Yeah right... not going to happen. The only way I have found to stop this is to disconnect from One Drive, and stop syncing with it *_completely_* . Download EVERYTHING that one drive has stored on it, back to your PC: if you delete it from one drive before you do this, it will be deleted from your computer as well... just - GONE. You can stop One Drive from starting automatically in the startup folder. You can turn off, disable, and even uninstall it from your computer. And make sure to sign out of One Drive as well. Look on the MS Support pages.
I will 100% agree that OneDrive is a royal pain and quite invasive. I truly wish Microsoft would stop their tactics because it CAN be a good tool. I DO use OneDrive for ALL of my data files. I have used it a lot to help with retrieving version histories. I do agree that a rebuild of a computer or getting a new computer can be a royal pain because I have to stop OneDrive while I recover my files locally so that 700GB of files don't have to download. Why DO I run OneDrive? #1) To be able to access certain key files on a regular basis from my tablet and phone using 365 mobile apps. #2) As one part of a comprehensive data protection system. YES YES YES, I DO have a true backup solution that also runs. I used an advanced backup software solution to backup my system.
I tried to set One Drive up as just a mapped drive and dump the whole syncing nonsense. I find the instructions for such (without a client) either incomplete or just don't work. I would love to get that working. Do you have or know of a good tutorial for that?
On my windows 11 computer (with OneDrive) the option to uncheck the desktop folder is turned on and grayed out and therefore it cannot be unchecked. Is this due to a really, really recent update to OneDrive? It isn't a big deal since I am the only user on my OneDrive account but I am curious.
OneDrive is so complicated. I thought it was simply like a stand alone external drive to where I could save documents I don’t want to keep on my composter or that o might want to access from somewhere else. Not so. It’s so intertwined with windows I hate it.
On your hard drive, you must have them there already i.e. pc drive is bigger than the Onedrive cloud you have e.g. 5 GB with a free Microsoft 365 account. Get an external drive for backups or use a cloud based backup service which would be safer than having the pc and backup drive on the same premises if you suffer a house fire or flood or other natural disaster.
Overfilling OneDrive is a disaster! Leo made a video where he suggested using manila folders placed at C>Users>username>ManilaFolders which can be pinned to File Explorer. No OneDrive worries there.
This video doesn't even get us started. I should note that nothing in this video is wrong - especially not on the point that this is a sync feature and not a backup feature. It's like Dropbox, not TimeMachine. The first point to understand about OneDrive is that, by default, it only gives you 2GB of storage. While this seems generous, once all your documents and music and everything else is in the cloud, it's really not enough. Microsoft will exploit this by leaving your computers in a weird state of half-synced and asking you for money repeatedly, and that's when a lot of us go "hold up, I don't actually need this. I already have DropBox or iCloud or OwnCloud" One thing you didn't mention is that it changes environment variables. This is problematic because many applications, especially those originally designed for Linux like git, ssh, and bash will copy these variables on install. So now all your company's secret keys and passwords is on your home computer. So you scramble to turn it off, but these are hidden folders, and they are not moved back, but your environment variable is changed except not in bash. So now, on your work computer, using git from PowerShell doesn't work, but it does work from bash. Then you find the files and move them, and now bash doesn't work but PowerShell does. Worse still, your company secrets are still on your personal laptop! But it gets even worse than that - if you ever log into your personal account on Edge, Microsoft seems to love taking the opportunity to set up everything it can for you. You know, for convenience. Log into your personal hotmail account from work and now you've got OneDrive and the store and your music etc. set up - and your OneDrive. But oh no, you already have OneDrive for Business, and it's got policies, and they are being applied. Since OneDrive for Business and OneDrive both do this and both constantly get activated they're going to start fighting over your files and environment variables, move them back and forth, causing total chaos, mixing your personal data with company data, using up all your space, and the whole thing turns into a hilariously messy situation where it's honestly not clear where your files even are anymore. In summary, as a developer, I absolutely loathe OneDrive, and I particularly loathe how it seems to sneak up on me. I have never deliberately enabled OneDrive. I do not use it, and I do not want it, and yet most of my computers have had it enabled at one point or another. It just shows up and somehow enables itself, and it drives me crazy.
@@NavinBetamax I wish they would leave us alone with the forced accounts and all of the spyware! Then the menus all say click to show more. They should just call 11 what it is, Windows annoying edition!
Because people are lazy and put important files on their Desktop instead of in folders under Documents. Putting Desktop under OneDrive ensures they'll be backed up to the cloud. Now I'll watch the video.. 😎
@@askleonotenboom I have a separate Desktop folder under OneDrive for my laptop and I can get to either Desktop folder from my PC or my laptop. OneDrive has been great for me. However, I also make image backups occasionally and use File History.
✅ Watch next ▶ OneDrive is Not Backup ▶ ruclips.net/video/PLzX1rfgzVI/видео.html
You let it be understood that every computer has a different desktop folder in Onedrive
@@electrocat9 My experience is that there's a single desktop folder shared across all machines. That's what people object to.
@@askleonotenboom that's what I understood at the beginning of the clip and at the end I wasn't sure anymore.
Onedrive behaves strangely, it caused me trouble long before I found out about it here from you... thanks.
Onedrive cloud makes me refrain from using it, except for what is strictly necessary, being afraid losing any data.
For complicated computer issues, you explain them with clarity and precision. I followed everything from start to finish. Great job Leo!
I recently had a client who bought a new laptop from Walmart and asked me to set it up for them. They wanted to create a Microsoft account and use it to log in. (Against my advice) They created the account, logged in, and a feature was automatically enabled without any action from either of us. (I immediately disabled OneDrive backups after explaining it to them.) This means that some people are encountering this feature as an opt-out, rather than opt-in, depending on the PC manufacturer. Thanks for the video explaining the issue, this will be an invaluable tool to direct clients to instead of explaining it.
My experience is that it really is an opt-in, but it's positioned in such a way that you don't realize you don't have to, it doesn't explain what will happen if you do, and it's often presented in a way that doesn't mention OneDrive AT ALL. It's opt-in, but for all intents and purposes it acts like an opt-out, but that's after the damage has been done.
I bought a new hp laptop specifically to run my laser engraver. Spent the first day getting rid of all the preloaded garbage that came with it including onedrive. It must be costing microsoft millions to operate the "free" onedrive system and since I am in the nothing is ever free camp it makes me wonder what their real motive is. My backups are either on external hard drives, usb sticks or sd cards.
@@rickgibson7876 All modern windows builds are automatically built with OneDrive. If you delete it and later install Microsoft 365, OneDrive will be reinstalled.
I've been avoiding one drive since long before I knew of Leo. It's reassuring to know that Leo has come to the same conclusions about one drive that I did long ago.
Eighteen-thirtythree on the video, the right advice! Create non-standard folder. And for usage convenience, they might be on the machine's Desktop folder.
Backup term used here is actually a sync process. NOT actual BACKUP as in a copy on a different location on External Drive. Syncronise !!!
We, my wife and I, have a Microsoft 365 Family account. We both have one Windows 10 and one Windows 11 PC each . My wife uses the same login on both of her PCs so I will tell her about the potential issues Leo has explained so clearly. I have two separate Microsoft accounts, one was for a business, now closed, the other my personal account. I only use one account on each PC - Family edition allows up to six accounts each with 1TB of storage. I am, therefore, not going to have the problem Leo explained in his video. I am less and less impressed with the direction Microsoft are taking for the home user. Effectively they want to push everything into the cloud, like Google of course, but making it less user friendly.
You could rename your channel "Adventures in Windows". Great video by the way.
Microsoft pesters users to use OneDrive and backup your data on OneDrive, but they don't tell you how it works
Nice information.
I had OneDrive eliminate my entire documents folder on my laptop without any cloud backup. How do I say thank you?
Going forward after a clean reinstall, I removed OneDrive from this PC. I would only access OneDrive through the web interface in the future - if I decide to use it at all.
I prefer to do my own manual backups to other less intrusive online providers and personal local physical backups.
WOW!, didn't that get complicated quick, although I did GET IT I bet a lot of people as still scratching their heads. Thanks Leo 👍.
brilliant clear explanations. I won't be using either Microsoft accounts, or Windows 11. Windows 10/local a/c s and then onto Linux and/or ChromeOS on Chromebook for me
One Drive is the first thing I disable and uninstall in a Windows Installation. My personal files are on a separate drive from Windows and I access them 90% of the time from Linux Mint. I try to keep them as far away from Windows as possible.
Hi Leo. I have disabled OneDrive (it no longer starts with Windows 11), and unlinked it. BUT - my ONLY Desktop, and the one that shows files/folders on my "home" screen is the C:/Users/Geoff Phillips/OneDrive/Desktop one. In your video, it is the original non-OneDrive desktop that returns. What might be going on with my machine. I'd prefer not to have OneDrive mentioned in my folder paths!
Thanks to your video I was able to untangle a couple knots that Microsoft had put into play. I noticed something you hadn't mentioned: the Public Desktop.
As I was flipping the desktop back to my C: drive locally, I noticed that not all the desktop items were in the Desktop folders. Some of the items that appeared on my desktop screen weren't in either Desktop folder. I found them in the Users\Public\Public Desktop folder. Public Desktop is NOT synced to the OneDrive folder.
How they got there? My guess it's due to my tendency to install apps as accessible to Any\All users instead of just my regular userid. I'm the only one who has physical access to my personal computers, so I haven't thought about the implications of this practice.
What I hate about Microsoft is not respecting user choices. Apple too by default turns on iCloud backup but once you turn it off it doesn't pester you to start backing up again the way Microsoft does.
Windows wants OneDrive to have your desktop and *_other system folders_* on it *_instead_* of on your computer. It was ON by default on my Win 11 home PC. It was a real PITA to get rid of it. It also was telling me it was full and I needed to upgrade to a paid version to keep going. Yeah right... not going to happen.
The only way I have found to stop this is to disconnect from One Drive, and stop syncing with it *_completely_* .
Download EVERYTHING that one drive has stored on it, back to your PC: if you delete it from one drive before you do this, it will be deleted from your computer as well... just - GONE.
You can stop One Drive from starting automatically in the startup folder. You can turn off, disable, and even uninstall it from your computer. And make sure to sign out of One Drive as well.
Look on the MS Support pages.
Very timely video!
THANK YOU for this!
I will 100% agree that OneDrive is a royal pain and quite invasive. I truly wish Microsoft would stop their tactics because it CAN be a good tool.
I DO use OneDrive for ALL of my data files. I have used it a lot to help with retrieving version histories.
I do agree that a rebuild of a computer or getting a new computer can be a royal pain because I have to stop OneDrive while I recover my files locally so that 700GB of files don't have to download.
Why DO I run OneDrive?
#1) To be able to access certain key files on a regular basis from my tablet and phone using 365 mobile apps.
#2) As one part of a comprehensive data protection system.
YES YES YES, I DO have a true backup solution that also runs. I used an advanced backup software solution to backup my system.
After your recommended process, will Windows recognize that these folders are now local§? Can I do the other folders? i.e documents, downloads, etc.
I tried to set One Drive up as just a mapped drive and dump the whole syncing nonsense. I find the instructions for such (without a client) either incomplete or just don't work. I would love to get that working. Do you have or know of a good tutorial for that?
I just uninstalled one drive from my pc. It’s still in one drive folder but nothing is copied into the cloud
On my windows 11 computer (with OneDrive) the option to uncheck the desktop folder is turned on and grayed out and therefore it cannot be unchecked. Is this due to a really, really recent update to OneDrive? It isn't a big deal since I am the only user on my OneDrive account but I am curious.
OneDrive is so complicated. I thought it was simply like a stand alone external drive to where I could save documents I don’t want to keep on my composter or that o might want to access from somewhere else. Not so. It’s so intertwined with windows I hate it.
were should i store my folders then if there bigger than one drive?
On your hard drive, you must have them there already i.e. pc drive is bigger than the Onedrive cloud you have e.g. 5 GB with a free Microsoft 365 account. Get an external drive for backups or use a cloud based backup service which would be safer than having the pc and backup drive on the same premises if you suffer a house fire or flood or other natural disaster.
Overfilling OneDrive is a disaster! Leo made a video where he suggested using manila folders placed at C>Users>username>ManilaFolders which can be pinned to File Explorer. No OneDrive worries there.
This video doesn't even get us started. I should note that nothing in this video is wrong - especially not on the point that this is a sync feature and not a backup feature. It's like Dropbox, not TimeMachine.
The first point to understand about OneDrive is that, by default, it only gives you 2GB of storage. While this seems generous, once all your documents and music and everything else is in the cloud, it's really not enough. Microsoft will exploit this by leaving your computers in a weird state of half-synced and asking you for money repeatedly, and that's when a lot of us go "hold up, I don't actually need this. I already have DropBox or iCloud or OwnCloud"
One thing you didn't mention is that it changes environment variables. This is problematic because many applications, especially those originally designed for Linux like git, ssh, and bash will copy these variables on install. So now all your company's secret keys and passwords is on your home computer. So you scramble to turn it off, but these are hidden folders, and they are not moved back, but your environment variable is changed except not in bash. So now, on your work computer, using git from PowerShell doesn't work, but it does work from bash. Then you find the files and move them, and now bash doesn't work but PowerShell does.
Worse still, your company secrets are still on your personal laptop!
But it gets even worse than that - if you ever log into your personal account on Edge, Microsoft seems to love taking the opportunity to set up everything it can for you. You know, for convenience. Log into your personal hotmail account from work and now you've got OneDrive and the store and your music etc. set up - and your OneDrive. But oh no, you already have OneDrive for Business, and it's got policies, and they are being applied. Since OneDrive for Business and OneDrive both do this and both constantly get activated they're going to start fighting over your files and environment variables, move them back and forth, causing total chaos, mixing your personal data with company data, using up all your space, and the whole thing turns into a hilariously messy situation where it's honestly not clear where your files even are anymore.
In summary, as a developer, I absolutely loathe OneDrive, and I particularly loathe how it seems to sneak up on me. I have never deliberately enabled OneDrive. I do not use it, and I do not want it, and yet most of my computers have had it enabled at one point or another. It just shows up and somehow enables itself, and it drives me crazy.
Just as often they pester you to upgrade to Windows 11.
......waiting for a Clean Dozen !!! Lol !
@@NavinBetamax I wish they would leave us alone with the forced accounts and all of the spyware! Then the menus all say click to show more. They should just call 11 what it is, Windows annoying edition!
@@charleshines5700 ….you didn’t get it ? …. Dozen , as in 12 !
Because people are lazy and put important files on their Desktop instead of in folders under Documents. Putting Desktop under OneDrive ensures they'll be backed up to the cloud. Now I'll watch the video.. 😎
Oh, I'm sure that's the rationale. But it just doesn't make sense to merge them all, and to do so without permission.
@@askleonotenboom I have a separate Desktop folder under OneDrive for my laptop and I can get to either Desktop folder from my PC or my laptop. OneDrive has been great for me. However, I also make image backups occasionally and use File History.
Linux is the solution. Ef M$
Spot on. Linux can be as simple or as complex as the user wants.
It WAS confusing until I watched this video and read "174265." Thanks Leo.