Forum Discussion
Include files in OneDrive sync without copying them
Hi John.
This feature is not available natively at the moment, but luckily there is a very effective workaround (if you are using NTFS as the local file system).
You should simply create in the local sync folder a symbolic link to the folder that you want to sync (which is located elsewhere) and such folder will sync as if it were a regular subfolder of the local sync folder (it can even be selectively synced...).
You can create symbolic links using the command line or by a wonderful utility called Link Shell Extension.
Hope it helps...
"As an end user I want to store my files on my local devices on the various disk drives available to me (be they internal or external drives) as I see fit and sync selected data to my OneDrive for Business Service as this will greatly enhance my productivity."
Pretty simple use case....
Why this cannot be fulfilled by Microsoft:
1. Available Disk Space on local devices
- Files On Demand frees up Local Disk Space but you lose Windows 10/File Explorer Indexing
- If I want to take advantage of searching my indexed files and folders, I have to turn off Files on Demand and then keep ALL of my files local on a single disk
- Even if you mark a file or folder "keep on my PC" it will not get indexed
- You can use the Web Browser to search OneDrive online, but it searches at the OneDrive level - you cannot initiate searches that search inside a specified sub-folder tree. SharePoint can only do Site Level searches for OneDrive (your OneDrive is a SharePoint Site).
- For example, you might expect 10 results from the Specific Folder but you get 100 from the OneDrive Site - very difficult to deal with so many results
- Microsoft has not enabled SharePoint Advanced Search which enables you to enter a partial path which you can do on regular SharePoint.
- With SSDs being the norm on PCs much of my data now sits on external disks.
- of my 256GB SSD, almost 100GB is used just to run WIndows
- Hibernation
- Swapfile
- Windows
- Program Files
- My Profile AppData
- Since Junction Points have issues the only solution is to add a 5 TB disk to the PC and move the local OneDrive Folder there. Place all of your files in that folder structure. But, you give up the speed of an SSD. But, you can do indexing and searching.
- Then setup Backup/Task Scheduler to make copies of files from the local OneDrive folder to your external media on a short, regular basis to mimic OneDrive Sync to the cloud and make local copies of your data just in case Microsoft decides to delete them.
- of my 256GB SSD, almost 100GB is used just to run WIndows
Revised use cases:
"As an end user I want to be to store my files on my local devices on single large internal local disk drive and sync selected data to my OneDrive for Business Folder as this will greatly enhance my productivity."