OneDrive : Puzzled and frustrated

rufford155 · 14 Nov 2020

MS WINDOWS 10 HOME 64-BIT 10.0.19041

I'll admit I dislike OneDrive intensely and wish MS had never bundled it in Win10 but I hope I will feel differently if I maybe understood it better.
I have scanned some of your tutorials but I am still confused by the following :
1) Although I have unlinked OneDrive from the machine, opening any file or folder in explorer reveals a path such as "C:\Users|MyName\OneDrive\Documents\*****". Why is OneDrive in this path when I it is unlinked and I have no OneDrive folder?
2) When I rebooted for updates, OneDrive had become live again and I had to repeat the unlink. Does this always occur?
3) Now the notification icon has disappeared despite being turned on in settings so I don't know whether OneDrive is live or not! How do I restore the icon please?
4) If OneDrive was running continuously it seems to me that I would have all my docs and photos on my HDD twice! Once in usual folders and once in OneDrive folder. This seems ridiculously inefficient. Am I mistaken or what? Any opinions?
5) On my previous 8.1 laptop I used Google Backup & Sync which worked perfectly and instantly in the background. Are there any known problems with this is Win10 ?
Thanks for any replies, John

Roderunner · 14 Nov 2020

Hi John, I had onedrive on my 2 win7 computers, a desktop pc & a laptop. I now have replaced the win7 laptop for a win10 laptop.
I always move onedrive from its default location to a folder on a partition of the main hard drive. Sync works perfectly, but only have one pc in use at any one time. My onedrive has 25gb of storage. Being on D: Drive, if there is any item I want to use in it, I can drag it to the desktop then delete it when done or save in another place.
I copy all in the onedrive folder to an external usb hdd weekly.
When I was on 2 win7 pc's I could use Acronis to make a system back up and restore if needed without losing anything on onedrive.

rufford155 · 15 Nov 2020

Thanks George, very interesting, glad you are happy with it.

Unfortunately doesn't answer any of my concerns.

margrave55 · 15 Nov 2020

Make life simpler for yourself. Don't use Onedrive. It's a mess. It's unreliable. It is sometimes even dangerous. Don't use it. Really.

Instead use Google Drive. It works. It's simple. It's reliable.

Time after time the Google tools beat the heck out of MS tools. Google Drive is just one more example.

rufford155 · 20 Nov 2020

Thanks, I tend to agree.
In the absence of anything helpful here, I will go with Google.

Is it possible to uninstall OneDrive completely or do I have to keep on unlinking it ?

OldNavyGuy · 20 Nov 2020

I uninstalled OneDrive on our systems.

thomaseg1 · 20 Nov 2020

rufford155 said:

Thanks, I tend to agree.
In the absence of anything helpful here, I will go with Google.

Is it possible to uninstall OneDrive completely or do I have to keep on unlinking it ?

Open task manager
go to the start up tab
choose One Drive and disable it.
Then reboot.
It shouldn't start till you turn it on again.

Roderunner · 20 Nov 2020

rufford155 said:

Thanks George, very interesting, glad you are happy with it.
Unfortunately doesn't answer any of my concerns.

OneDrive works perfectly on my equipment. Using it as I stated earlier.

sygnus21 · 20 Nov 2020

rufford155 said:

Thanks, I tend to agree.
In the absence of anything helpful here, I will go with Google.

Is it possible to uninstall OneDrive completely or do I have to keep on unlinking it ?

Your problem is you're listening to all the inaccurate noise about OneDrive instead of actually trying to learn how it functions and what it actually can do for you.

I use OneDrive a lot to the point I couldn't be without it. It is extremely convenient where syncing files are concerned. I can write a note on my phone, drop it in my OneDrive folder and access from my PC or anywhere else. If I make changes to my office docs placed in OneDrive those changes are reflected on my other PC's/laptops. As a student, when I'm in class and taking notes on my laptop, I can drop those notes in OneDrive and access them on my desktop without even touching my laptop. You can also manage what files and folders gets sync'd.

The bottom line is OneDrive is a lot better and more useful than you think (or had been told). All you have to do is come out your shell and try to learn how it works and what it does.

As for auto starting, to prevent that, all you need to do is go into OneDrive's settings (right click the OneDrive app in the notification area) and untick "Start OneDrive automatically when I sign in to Windows" It now should not start when logging in to Windows.

Good luck.

rufford155 · 25 Nov 2020

Sygnus : Thanks for your post but I don't need luck - I need answers !

You and others are praising OneDrive but nobody has addressed the specific questions in my OP.
This is very disappointing as I got excellent help previously in the 7 and 8.1 forums.

My situation is completely different to yours - I have been retired for nearly 20 years, I have one laptop in the UK and one abroad, I don't do any work on my phone or tablet so I only need OneDrive for backup not moving stuff around.

In the hope of answers I will repeat my queries briefly :
1)Why does OneDrive appear in the path of all files and folders when I have unlinked it ?
2) Why does it become live again after an update reboot ?
3) Why has the notification icon disappeared and how do I get it back ?
4) Why would I need all my stuff twice - once in normal folders and once in a Onedrive folder ?
(Or three times if I use File History as well) !

Thanks in anticipation