OneDrive Personal: Not exactly behaving as I was expecting

[britechguy]

Given that I have 2 different machines dealing with OneDrive Personal for 2 different MS Accounts, I'm seeing a number of things I wasn't expecting:

1. There is no rush, at all, to get things uploaded to OneDrive, even overnight when the machines are idle.

2. It seems to be sensitive, very sensitive, to whether you have "enough" on-board storage in determining when or whether it's going to upload. My partner's machine came with a 1 TB SSD, and mine with a 512 GB SSD (a 1 TB replacement/addition is on its way). His data has always been under 512 GB because that was the size of the SSD on his last laptop, mine had been 1 TB. Well, since setting up both machines, a day apart, his OneDrive space used remains at 0% while mine is uploading in fits and spurts and at the moment is using 235 GB (and there's plenty more to go - It did about 150 GB last night overnight, and is "resting" now).

3. Seems to want you to have local storage capacity equal to what is stored in the cloud, which to me sorta-kinda defeats the purpose, particularly since I'd think most of us intend to keep most of that data strictly in the cloud and streaming down to the computer on demand.

I have no idea of how long the process will take on either computer to shuttle everything to OneDrive as there seems to be little rhyme or reason to how it decides when to start and stop the bucket brigade to the cloud.

 

[callthatgirl]

MS personal OneDrive is extremely hard to backup unless you have it downloaded locally. This will eat up your c drive space.
I recommend you do the upload on one pc, then make that the master, download it all locally.
Then on the 2nd computer, connect the account and make it cloud only if you wish

I'd just let them both rest, turn off sleep mode until everyone is synced.

 

[britechguy]

I'd just let them both rest, turn off sleep mode until everyone is synced.

That's pretty much what I've done. I'm really not concerned for "data safety" since I have everything that was strictly local backed up already, and anything we're creating new is going straight to OneDrive.

I just really expected that the backup to cloud, particularly during the overnight "everything else is idle" hours, would be much more rapid than it's turning out to be.

If OneDrive Business worked this way (and I already know from what's been said that it doesn't) no business would be willing to use it. When you walk into the M365 Business world, and are coming from a local only world, you expect that your data is going to get backed up to the cloud with a great deal more dispatch than OneDrive Personal shows.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

The "sync client"....(OneDrive client/service) on the computer is the same....be it Personal or Business.

OD4Business just unlocks a lot more features when the 365 tenant "hooks into it", ability to be managed by InTune, lots of added goodies there.
I've never seen a difference in speed tween the two.

I do know that lots of cores...and lots of RAM...plus a zippy drive...ensure it can go in one big push. The list "server to 365" migration I recently did, I used an AMD Threadripper workstation with 64 gigs of RAM, on a comcast pipe with 50 meg upload...and I pushed like...400 gigs total...in 3 or 4 chunks...and it never paused. It took as much as I fed it.

Typically with average spec workstations, 8 or better yet..16 gigs...and an "5" class CPU or higher..and of course...SSD...even those will still pause every now 'n then. Doesn't really make a diff if you try to feel you're pushing it more by pausing and resuming....really just, start with a freshly rebooted workstation, copy/paste..and let it go. Reboot every few hours if you think it really did stall. It'll pick up where it left off.

I do like managing the InTune policies including blocking *.URL and *.LNK files from syncing....

 

[fincoder]

Seems to want you to have local storage capacity equal to what is stored in the cloud, which to me sorta-kinda defeats the purpose, particularly since I'd think most of us intend to keep most of that data strictly in the cloud and streaming down to the computer on demand.

No, it's just your situation of a mass transfer of data is taking a while.

I assume you're just using the default 'free up space' setting in OneDrive that automatically frees up space for files that aren't opened often. There's also the ability to tell OneDrive that specific folders (or files) should have their space freed up. In File Explorer, right click on a folder in OneDrive and you get the options 'Free up space' and 'Always keep on this device'. These options manually control whether they're kept locally or not on a folder or file basis. Those options also appear when right-clicking the OneDrive folder itself, so maybe you can force the lot to be freed up (after it's all uploaded of course, but it might prioritise the upload). I assume these manual options will work quicker than waiting for the automatic free up of space.

 

[britechguy]

Well, curiouser and curiouser. OneDrive on my partner's machine has done as close to nothing as is possible over a period of days, so I decided to uninstall and reinstall. The version that was on the machine was noted as OneDrive 23.142.0709.0001, and when you opened settings with "original version" as noted above, they looked like this:

after the reinstall, and the version number shown in Control Panel is EXACTLY the same, they look like this:



Not only that, but all of a sudden the "refreshed" OneDrive is pushing files up to the cloud like a freight train about to go off the rails. The difference is so dramatic that I've taken the step of doing the same uninstall/reinstall on my own machine, and at the moment it's processing changes at an insanely fast rate, but has not yet started the upload freight train.

I can't explain it, but I'm now seeing the kind of behavior I would have expected from OneDrive to begin with.

 

[fincoder]

Interesting that, as per your other thread, you got the slightly older OneDrive GUI when installed using winget. I'm thinking the newer GUI must be a separate element like a OneDrive Shell or Skin that would require another winget command (but not needed obviously).

I'm also thinking that the reinstall of OneDrive kicked it into gear and it's probably nothing to do with the different look of OneDrive.

 

[britechguy]

And the saga continues, at least on my machine, I haven't yet checked my partner's

Remember, my computer has a 512 GB drive, and my entire Music library is shown this way in File Explorer:


Note the "Stored Locally" part, which means it's on the SSD already. Now, when I open the properties for Music, I get this:



Now, given that I get 1 TB of OneDrive space, of which I've used only:



And what's already up there comes directly from this machine, and only this machine.

So, I decide I want Music to be a part of OneDrive, and choose to move in the Location part of the dialog shown above:



After hitting the OK button, this is the result, in individual steps:


in which I choose the Yes option, then I get:



and it would seem logical to me that the answer to this should be "Yes" if I want my Music library to be permanently resident in the OneDrive Music folder, so I choose Yes, then this:



The above cannot possibly be true. The entirety of my SSD, Windows itself included, is not even 512 GB, let alone having the Music part of it push OneDrive over 1 TB.

So, WTF? What am I missing here?

In the end, my Music library is one of those things I'd want backed up on OneDrive, but also to have the files always available locally, too, since I don't want to be streaming them at all times and want access even when offline. But I can't even follow what I thought should be the logical process to move 'em there.

I know I could copy from the folder they're in, to the music folder under my OneDrive Personal, but that wouldn't seem to redirect the Music Library there, which I want as well.

 

[britechguy]

Addendum: I decided to go about moving the Music library from the opposite direction. OneDrive was already set up to take the Music folder and sync it, so I simply did a cut and paste from the local Music folder to the OneDrive equivalent.

After that, I went through the process above, EXCEPT:
1. At the Move folder dialog, I chose, "No," since I had already done a cut and paste (and after which OneDrive started its thing).
2. At the Folder Redirect dialog, I also chose "No."

Then I went to the properties for Music, Location Tab, and just typed in the OneDrive folder, fully qualified, and hit the OK button:


Afterward, this is what File Explorer looks like: