Where is OneDrive stored?

pursuant · 12 Jan 2021

Ive been trying to find a clear answer to what has been an issue for me. Does what you have on One Drive actually take up space on my PC? As far as I know I did not purchase or authorize files to go into an online cloud. I have 69 gigs stored in OneDrive and after viewing the files, I see that they have a 2016 date on them. These are music and photo files. I do have a large amount of photo and music files on my pc. I assume these are copies of some of these files? but not the original files. Can I delete the 69gigs and still assume I will keep the files I show on my hard drive?
Thanks
Mark

Matthew Wai · 12 Jan 2021

Do you have an account connected to OneDrive?

pursuant · 13 Jan 2021

Apparently I do. Its the free 5 gig account, with 0 gigs used. I looked at the files contained in it and found a folder for images with sub folders that correspond to some of the folders I have on my hard drive, but all these folders are empty, so just the folders were created. They all show a date of 2016. I assume this is when they were created? So it looks like the files in OneDrive are actually taking up space on my hard drive? Are these just copies of the files I have already? If I delete them from OneDrive does it delete them from the ones I know exist on my PC?
Thanks for your help
Mark

Winuser · 13 Jan 2021

pursuant said:

Apparently I do. Its the free 5 gig account, with 0 gigs used. I looked at the files contained in it and found a folder for images with sub folders that correspond to some of the folders I have on my hard drive, but all these folders are empty, so just the folders were created. They all show a date of 2016. I assume this is when they were created? So it looks like the files in OneDrive are actually taking up space on my hard drive? Are these just copies of the files I have already? If I delete them from OneDrive does it delete them from the ones I know exist on my PC?
Thanks for your help
Mark

If these files are important and you don't want to lose them copy them to a external drive. I also suggest that you make a system image to a external drive. The free version of Macrium Reflect is highly rated on this site. After you have them copied you can delete them and see what happens. Worse case scenario you can restore them from the copies.

pursuant · 13 Jan 2021

They are music files and yes they are important but only if they are not copies on my hard drive. I wonder if I just deleted one song on the onedrive, then go to my hard drive files and see if that file is still there, if it is then the onedrive files are just copies and I can delete them, if that file then disappears on my hard drive then the onedrive file and the hard drive files are one and the same? Does that sound like a test for this?

bro67 · 13 Jan 2021

If you turn off Onedrive sync the files stay in the folder for Onedrive on your hard drive. You get Onedrive free with Windows 10 so that you can sync your profile between devices when signing in with a Microsoft login.

pparks1 · 13 Jan 2021

The way that modern OneDrive works is different by default. If you go into the Settings, and look at the General Tab there is a checkcbox for the FIles on Demand feature.

If that feature is enabled, which is the default, the files might NOT be on your computer. They may ONLY be in the cloud.

You can verify where files are based on the icon that you see on the files themselves and if you hover over the file, it will enable the popup saying where the files are.

In this example, the files with the 2 green check marks are Actually ON the hard drive, as well as in the cloud. The file with just the cloud icon is ONLY on the cloud and not physically taking space on my hard drive. If I double click on the file with the cloud icon (Document.docx), it would immediately download the file locally and would now be taking up space on the hard drive as well as the cloud (the icon would also change to a green check mark).

You can see how much space is being used in the Cloud on One Drive in Settings, under the account tab.

AS you can see in my example, I am using about 78GB of stuff out of 1TB in my OneDrive (I have 1TB as I pay for Microsoft 365 and get 1TB per account). My cell phone backs up pictures automatically to OneDrive in the cloud...so the vast majority of my files are ONLY in the cloud as I don't really want to eat up precious NVMe drive space, and my pictures are ON my phone and On OneDrive...so the chances of my phone going belly up, breaking or being lost/stolen at the exact same time that OneDrive has a catastrophic failure is pretty small.

You can use a tool like TreeSizeFree to see how much space is actually being consumed on your hard drive. In my case, it's on 45MB.

As to your question about which files get deleted, be careful and test.

So, using my examples above, if I go to OneDrive.live.com in my browser, and I navigate to my JillianTest.txt and I choose to Delete that file, it will remove the file from the cloud (and put it in the cloud recycle bin), AND it will ALSO delete the file from my hard drive too (and it will show up in the local computer recycle bin)

pursuant · 13 Jan 2021

Thank you for the assistance
My OneDrive settings show that I dont have an account but I do have an account as I logged in online. When I do go to setting on the app, it doesnt show any files stored and asks to setup an account . I also deleted one file from my onedrive folder and found that it wasnt deleted on my hard drive, so it seems like these files that are stored are in a different location than the ones I have on my hard drive right? I also noted that some of the folders in OneDrive dont show up in my folders on my hard drive ( again these are images) This pc is about 2 years old, the files folders were created in 2016. It looks like these may have been created on another pc I had previous to this one?

Berton · 13 Jan 2021

Those 4-year-old files most likely are from your older machine. If they were mine I'd get them copied onto an External USB drive before they get lost.

Winuser · 14 Jan 2021

pursuant said:

They are music files and yes they are important but only if they are not copies on my hard drive. I wonder if I just deleted one song on the onedrive, then go to my hard drive files and see if that file is still there, if it is then the onedrive files are just copies and I can delete them, if that file then disappears on my hard drive then the onedrive file and the hard drive files are one and the same? Does that sound like a test for this?

So they are important but not enough to have them backed up?