OneDrive

[beautifulyoungmind]

I store 20 years worth of videos & photos on 2 portable hard drives rather than on my computer. One hard drive just failed leaving me feeling pretty vulnerable so I have decided to make use of the 1TB of OneDrive space I get from MS 365 Family.
I need to know how to copy over my files from the portable to OneDrive and then leave them on OneDrive and not have any kind of sync function pull them off it once I have removed the drive.
I'd like to store these photos up there periodically adding to them in batches and then also use OneDrive as a day to day storage place for documents I work on on my desktop.
First time using the cloud as storage and I'm confused by the sync options as have a hard drive mindset.

[lljkk]

I wonder if you'd be better off compressing the files and uploading the compressed files.

1 TB is a lot though, via uploads. Google no help?

[DogInATent]

See:

[tribpot]

You can install the OneDrive app, which will effectively make OneDrive look like another drive on your computer, you can just drag and drop files on to it and these will then sync between your computer and the cloud. For your day-to-day working files, that's what I'd do.

For the files you want to copy from the external hard drives to the cloud, whilst you could also drag and drop them on to your computer and let the app do the sync, it will mean being limited by the size of your internal hard disk and putting them into folders which (after sync) you right click and mark as 'free up space', meaning the OneDrive app removes the local copy and the file is just in the cloud. It would be simpler for these files to open up OneDrive in the browser and directly upload the files to OneDrive.

[lljkk]

I thought OP;s problem is she doesn't want sync, she wants a snapshot archive where the OneDrive version doesn't have files deleted even if her local version gets a file deletion. I may be wrong, though.

[tribpot]

Yep so there would be a third option, which is to tell OneDrive to always sync the external hard drive directly whereas in my two options she has to manually copy the files into a OneDrive location - either direct to the cloud or on her PC's hard drive. That way deletions on the external hard drive won't be synchronised to OneDrive.

[beautifulyoungmind]

Thank you all for you advice..I'm still working through your replies because I'm embarrassingly slow to learn exactly how OneDrive works. I also have more questions!

To complicate things I have just changed from a 7 year old clunky Dell Tower with ITB storage to a HP All in One with 500MB storage. This move is what prompted me to dig out the 2 hard drives and discover one was corrupted.

What I have ended up doing is copy & pasting my photos/videos from the working storage device onto the OneDrive icon with File Explorer on my old Dell. I can see the C drive storage being used up so presumably that copy function has also copied them onto the Dell C drive...a machine I am about to get rid of.
The photos have all copied into the cloud and the videos are chugging away and will take about 2 more days! I'm okay with this because a) it is working & I already feel a sense of comfort that I have the files saved b) I can work on my new HP and not interfere with this mammoth upload

1. What do I need to do to make sure that those photos stay up in the cloud once I wipe and bin the Dell? Is there some kind of one way setting so they just stay up there and don't get wiped when I clean up the Dell for scrappage
   
   
2. On my new HP I want to use the OneDrive as day to day storage for documents (kids school reports, correspondence). If I sync this new desktop to the OneDrive will it see that I have no photos/videos on the HP machine and with wipe my cloud uploads and/or sync them back down to the new desktop (not enough storage to keep a copy on)
   
   I am sure I am asking really ridiculous & stupid questions but I just cannot get my head round it.
   In time I will want to add to my photo/video uploads with a 2023 folder for example (I tend to do an annual back up) - probably from my HP desktop. Can I add these to the chunk I've uploaded as a bolt on?
   
   I really miss the days when I worked in a big office and could go and chat to IT support. It's hard to navigate on your own & I'm pretty good at googling anything and having a o. The stakes are just a bit too high this time round with my precious photos & videos. I just bought yet another portable hard drive and attempted to copy over from the working drive through the new desktop so I've got my two hard back-ups but it refused to copy them..so that's a £60 2TB Seagate drive wasted. V fed up

[tribpot]

When you have finished with the Dell, I would unlink the PC from OneDrive. You can see the instructions from Microsoft here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/how-to-remove-an-account-in-onedrive-72699268-9e64-45bd-b723-9a19f4512fd1

Before doing anything drastic, make sure this has definitely unlinked. The OneDrive folder will probably still be visible on the PC, go in and delete a file and ensure that when you look at OneDrive in the browser (https://onedrive.live.com/) the file is still there.

You could then uninstall OneDrive from the Dell just to be on the safe side.

When you then sync your new machine to OneDrive it won't delete all the photos that are already in OneDrive - it's not trying to mirror a particular device.

[beautifulyoungmind]

@tribpot thank you SO much. I've been really bad at checking my thread for replies but I'm really grateful for your advice

[tribpot]

No probs, hope you get it sorted.

[TheSilveryPussycat]

Thanks from a lurker for this thread, as I am about to attempt to fathom cloud storage myself