Forum Discussion
Onedrive to Sync Folders Across 2 pcs
Hi, I'm new to Onedrive and cannot work out how to configure it to do what I got it for. I want to sync files and folders between my desktop and laptop. This is about 4TB of audio/video stored on a ...
There are endless videos and explained online about how this works
When OneDrive is installed it syncs everything in the local folder with what is in the cloud. So if there is nothing in the cloud, it will copy everything up first. When you install on a new PC it starts by copying down "stubs" of the files. The files appear local but won't be brought down in full until you either open the files or specify a file/folder needs to have "offline" copies you can access when there is no internet connection.
When OneDrive is installed it syncs everything in the local folder with what is in the cloud. So if there is nothing in the cloud, it will copy everything up first. When you install on a new PC it starts by copying down "stubs" of the files. The files appear local but won't be brought down in full until you either open the files or specify a file/folder needs to have "offline" copies you can access when there is no internet connection.
Thanks for the response. I'm not sure I fully understand. I obvs get that putting folders into my Onedrive folder copies to the cloud, but you're saying that then when I open anything (from it's original location, not the Onedrive folder?) it then copies it to the Onedrive folder? As I said, I have 4TB of files on external drives and a 1TB internal C:/ drive. I want to be able to sync everything from the external drives to the same setup on my laptop but not copy them to the C:/ drives as there's not enough storage. Does that make sense.
- OneDrive only *syncs* from the single OneDrive folder.
You can *upload* from other folders direct to OneDrive in cloud using browser interface.
This will mean that you have more online than you can have on your local hard drive, which is fine. You can choose to sync these as stubs or to exclude specific OneDrive subfolders from appearing on your local device.
Note the contents of your external drives are now distinct unconnected copies of what is in OneDrive.