One Drive

[Fish]

As some of you may know, I bought a new laptop, a Lenovo Yoga S730, I also purchased the Home & Student Edition of Microsoft, and everything has been fine, I transferred and copied everything over from my old PC and the experience has been great.

However, I'm now getting alerts saying my One Drive is almost full and I need to buy more space, it's also now showing little red crosses against some items indicating that they're possibly not properly saved and reverse arrows saying 'sync pending'?

Now I purchased this specific laptop has it had bucket loads of capacity, which in looking at my settings, I've still got plenty of, I've only used a maximum of 25% of my SSD capacity, but this One Drive is confusing me, it seems everything I do on the PC is automatically saved to One Drive, which has a different and lesser amount of space available, if I understand this correctly.

I've gone to delete some non important items from the One Drive drop down menu, but it automatically deletes them from my PC (laptop) also!

So I'm a little confused, its comes across as I'm being forced to buy more space, which I want to avoid, if possible.

I've since come across Google Drive, so I've downloaded that as it was free, but I'm not sure what, if anything, that has done, other than copy some things also, or if it's just complicating the matter!

Do I need One Drive?

Can I remove it if I don't need it without losing everything on my laptop, and if I need to keep it, can I choose to put things in it to keep the capacity low and workable without buying more space, or, do I have other options?

Help........

 

[Hacker Khan]

One drive is Microsofts cloud based storage system. I'm assuming you have the free version in which case you get a limited amount of storage. If you upgrade to office 365 I think you get a massive amount that you will never fill. Advantages of one drive is that it makes sharing and accessing files across different devices easier and it is a back up if your hard drive goes pop. Plus it is synchronised with other Microsoft apps.

If you don't want to use one drive then just stick everything on your hard drive. Google drive does a similar thing.

Personally I'd choose either one drive or Google drive and pay for the extra storage and use that, one drive may be a better option if you are using a windows 10 pc. Both are no doubt harvesting all your information once you upload it to their cloud servers.

This may help with one drive.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/onedrive-tips-and-tricks-how-to-master-microsofts-free-cloud-storage/

 

[TheDiablo]

One Drive the Microsoft Cloud, like iCloud

When you save things, you need to save them to 'this computer' and not to one drive.

You should be able to transfer things back fairly easily

You should also be able to change the default setting too

 

[Lord Tyrion]

We don't use One Drive at work we use Google Drive, gmail etc. We have been using it for 2-3 years and have barely scratched the space available. Very simple, works well.

 

[need_my_wedge]

I think the free version of one drive is (was). only 5GB a month, which is not a lot these days. I purchased the Home edition a few years back, which allows the software to be used on 5 pc’s for 5 different users, with 1TB of space on One drive For each user. its about £70 a year, but it’s now installed on my system, the wife’s laptop and the boys mew laptop purchased for uni. the subscription has to be paid each year, but if you look hard enough, you can find discounted keys on eBay or Amazon for about £50. I think that’s a pretty fair price for 3 users a year.

 

[rudebhoy]

Google Drive gives you 15gb free compared to 5gb with One Drive. I've used both, and One Drive is a better more seamless product imo.

I'm pretty sure there is a way to take certain docs out of the one drive backup.

 

[PhilTheFragger]

Can I clarify the various storage capacities against the different Microsoft Office options.

One drive is part of windows, it gives you a storage capacity of 5 GB total (not monthly)

The Office home & student is a one off payment for a program that gives you Word Excel & PowerPoint. It doesn’t effect your one drive storage.

If you buy Office 365 it comes with 1Tb of Onedrive capacity, it has recently been rebranded as Microsoft 365
this is an annual subscription model and there are 2 versions

Personal which gives you all the Office programs on 1 device costs about £55 a year

Home which you can spread around the family 6 users costs about £65 a year

Your pc is saving documents to the onedrive/documents which then synchronises with the cloud, this is different to My Documents which is just on your computer

If you stop using onedrive make sure you backup your stuff to an external hard drive regularly
?

 

[Fish]

One drive is Microsofts cloud based storage system. I'm assuming you have the free version in which case you get a limited amount of storage. If you upgrade to office 365 I think you get a massive amount that you will never fill. Advantages of one drive is that it makes sharing and accessing files across different devices easier and it is a back up if your hard drive goes pop. Plus it is synchronised with other Microsoft apps.

If you don't want to use one drive then just stick everything on your hard drive. Google drive does a similar thing.

Personally I'd choose either one drive or Google drive and pay for the extra storage and use that, one drive may be a better option if you are using a windows 10 pc. Both are no doubt harvesting all your information once you upload it to their cloud servers.

This may help with one drive.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/onedrive-tips-and-tricks-how-to-master-microsofts-free-cloud-storage/

Yes, the laptop is Windows 10, I understand the concept, but I didn't realise it would save everything and consume so much capacity with ease!

One Drive the Microsoft Cloud, like iCloud

When you save things, you need to save them to 'this computer' and not to one drive.

You should be able to transfer things back fairly easily

You should also be able to change the default setting too

I'm currently looking for those settings, so I can hopefully 'choose' what to save to where at ay given time.

We don't use One Drive at work we use Google Drive, gmail etc. We have been using it for 2-3 years and have barely scratched the space available. Very simple, works well.

I thought this would be simple also, and having an iPad and iPhone, I hoped that everything would sync, I'm sure once I'm over this hurdle everything will be fine and I'll continue with just One Drive, but I have Google Drive as back-up if needed.

I think the free version of one drive is (was). only 5GB a month, which is not a lot these days. I purchased the Home edition a few years back, which allows the software to be used on 5 pc’s for 5 different users, with 1TB of space on One drive For each user. its about £70 a year, but it’s now installed on my system, the wife’s laptop and the boys mew laptop purchased for uni. the subscription has to be paid each year, but if you look hard enough, you can find discounted keys on eBay or Amazon for about £50. I think that’s a pretty fair price for 3 users a year.

I thought when I purchased Office Home & Student outright, not monthly, it gave me more than the 5GB of free capacity, it would seem that this is not the case, as I've just tried to input my product code again, but it's stating that code has been redeemed.

I've just logged into my One Drive account through Microsoft, and it offers a monthly cost of £1.99 for 100GB of storage, how much storage is this, would that be pretty difficult to max out?

I'd rather pay that kind of amount than invest in a figure between £50-£99 for 365 when I have 90% of those applications with Office Home & Student already just to get more storage, but then have to pay a slightly lesser figure annually.

Further clarifications welcome based on these findings.....

 

[Fish]

Can I clarify the various storage capacities against the different Microsoft Office options.

One drive is part of windows, it gives you a storage capacity of 5 GB total (not monthly)

The Office home & student is a one off payment for a program that gives you Word Excel & PowerPoint. It doesn’t effect your one drive storage.

If you buy Office 365 it comes with 1Tb of Onedrive capacity, it has recently been rebranded as Microsoft 365
this is an annual subscription model and there are 2 versions

Personal which gives you all the Office programs on 1 device costs about £55 a year

Home which you can spread around the family 6 users costs about £65 a year

Your pc is saving documents to the onedrive/documents which then synchronises with the cloud, this is different to My Documents which is just on your computer

If you stop using onedrive make sure you backup your stuff to an external hard drive regularly
?

So what more programmes, if any, would I get with 365 that I don't have already through Office Home & Student, is it worth upgrading to just to get that extra storage, or is the option I've found for £1.99 for 100GB, less than £25 pa more viable?

 

[Hobbit]

The only thing I use One Drive for is things I want to be able to share. Everything else gets saved to the laptop, and is backed up to a 1tb external HD. Every so often I'll look at what is on the laptop, e.g. photos taken eons ago, and just have them on the external HD

 

[Fish]

The only thing I use One Drive for is things I want to be able to share. Everything else gets saved to the laptop, and is backed up to a 1tb external HD. Every so often I'll look at what is on the laptop, e.g. photos taken eons ago, and just have them on the external HD

Where are the settings to choose this option, mine, and I mean everything I do, is getting saved to One Drive, which is why it's battered already.

But more importantly, can I remove anything from One Drive without losing it completely? What I've tried already deleted both from One Drive and my Laptop!

 

[need_my_wedge]

Yes, the laptop is Windows 10, I understand the concept, but I didn't realise it would save everything and consume so much capacity with ease!




I'm currently looking for those settings, so I can hopefully 'choose' what to save to where at ay given time.




I thought this would be simple also, and having an iPad and iPhone, I hoped that everything would sync, I'm sure once I'm over this hurdle everything will be fine and I'll continue with just One Drive, but I have Google Drive as back-up if needed.




I thought when I purchased Office Home & Student outright, not monthly, it gave me more than the 5GB of free capacity, it would seem that this is not the case, as I've just tried to input my product code again, but it's stating that code has been redeemed.

I've just logged into my One Drive account through Microsoft, and it offers a monthly cost of £1.99 for 100GB of storage, how much storage is this, would that be pretty difficult to max out?

I'd rather pay that kind of amount than invest in a figure between £50-£99 for 365 when I have 90% of those applications with Office Home & Student already just to get more storage, but then have to pay a slightly lesser figure annually.

Further clarifications welcome based on these findings.....

I'm not sure about the student version, thought that was free? All other Home/ Personal versions are an annual cost, paid every 12 months. They may do a monthly DD now, I don’t know for sure. 100GB is not a lot these days, but it will depend on how many files you store regularly , and how big they are. Many media files can be 2 or 3 gig in size, often more.

if you don’t extend the license, then I think you automatically drop back to the free 5GB, which may result in you losing data not backed up elsewhere. if you don’t want to pay Microsoft the subscription, you may lose functionality in the apps too.

Without one drive, you can pick up some decent 1TB SSD external drives for less than £100, which keeps all your data local to you. Personally, I don’t keep anything confidential in the cloud, but it’s fine for photo’s or music etc.

 

[need_my_wedge]

Where are the settings to choose this option, mine, and I mean everything I do, is getting saved to One Drive, which is why it's battered already.

But more importantly, can I remove anything from One Drive without losing it completely? What I've tried already deleted both from One Drive and my Laptop!

my system doesn’t auto sync, never has, so not sure why yours is, but, have a look here, hope it helps

https://www.c-sharpcorner.com/article/how-to-disable-onedrive-sync-on-a-windows-10-pc/

 

[TheDiablo]

I'm not sure about the student version, thought that was free? All other Home/ Personal versions are an annual cost, paid every 12 months. They may do a monthly DD now, I don’t know for sure. 100GB is not a lot these days, but it will depend on how many files you store regularly , and how big they are. Many media files can be 2 or 3 gig in size, often more.

if you don’t extend the license, then I think you automatically drop back to the free 5GB, which may result in you losing data not backed up elsewhere. if you don’t want to pay Microsoft the subscription, you may lose functionality in the apps too.

Without one drive, you can pick up some decent 1TB SSD external drives for less than £100, which keeps all your data local to you. Personally, I don’t keep anything confidential in the cloud, but it’s fine for photo’s or music etc.

You can still buy outright, i.e no annual recurring cost. The Mrs just got it for £70, think it was £50 off with a new laptop

 

[Hacker Khan]

So what more programmes, if any, would I get with 365 that I don't have already through Office Home & Student, is it worth upgrading to just to get that extra storage, or is the option I've found for £1.99 for 100GB, less than £25 pa more viable?

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/mic...icrosoft-365-products?activetab=tab:primaryr1 Depends how much you want to use PPT, Excel, Word etc

 

[PhilTheFragger]

With Home & Student, you get Word, excel , PowerPoint and onenote ( nobody in the world has ever used onenote)

With 365 you also get Outlook for emails and Access the database program.

That extra 100Gb sounds like a decent deal if you don’t want the extra programs

 

[Fish]

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/mic...icrosoft-365-products?activetab=tab:primaryr1 Depends how much you want to use PPT, Excel, Word etc

The only thing I can't find that 365 offers over OHS, is Outlook, so i don't think upgrading to 365 is a viable option just for the extra storage and then tying me into annual subs?

 

[Hacker Khan]

With Home & Student, you get Word, excel , PowerPoint and onenote ( nobody in the world has ever used onenote)

With 365 you also get Outlook for emails and Access the database program.

That extra 100Gb sounds like a decent deal if you don’t want the extra programs

Hey, I use it a lot. I have a Microsoft Go Tablet/PC thing that I use mostly for making handwritten notes in meetings using the stylus and OneNote. But I admit that is a bit niche.

 

[Fish]

With Home & Student, you get Word, excel , PowerPoint and onenote ( nobody in the world has ever used onenote)

With 365 you also get Outlook for emails and Access the database program.

That extra 100Gb sounds like a decent deal if you don’t want the extra programs

What would Outlook offer me above what I use now, I actually thought I was using outlook through Microsoft Edge? It's where I imported all my GMAIL and alias email addresses into, there's even a section in there called 365 Exchange, whatever that is? But under my default email address in settings, it states Outlook.com?

 

[Hacker Khan]

The only thing I can't find that 365 offers over OHS, is Outlook, so i don't think upgrading to 365 is a viable option just for the extra storage and then tying me into annual subs?

Fair enough. I think you need to have some cloud storage for things like photos or files that you really need to save if your house goes up in flames. With the subs model you will get updated versions of programs all the time where as with one off payments you won't, but that may not be an issue if you are not a heavy user of the apps anyway. But also consider that the best advice for security is to keep all your OS and apps up to date.