0ne Drive

[carol80]

I have one drive and it is full. I need to upgrade. I did not want one drive in the first place so only backed up to the computer.
I now notice that my backups have been going to one drive.
Can I empty one drive and back up to the computer only, as that is what I thought I had been doing.
Carol.
Bit of a dunce when it comes to how a computer works.

[andrewalston]

Microsoft do all they can to get you to use "Onedrive Backup".

Once you do, the contents of your "Documents" and "Pictures" are MOVED into folders with similar names, which are then replicated to Microsoft's servers.

They give you 5GB with your Microsoft account, but signing up to "Microsoft 365" (which used to be Office 365) gives you a lot more.

However most of us would rather NOT pay so much a month to keep our stuff.

Cutting and pasting from your current Documents folder ( which is actually C:\Users\<username>\OneDrive\Documents ) to somewhere else on your PC which is not within OneDrive will reduce your usage, because the deletions will be replicated on Microsoft's servers.

You WILL need to back them up yourself, to an external drive or two. One or more backups should be kept somewhere else, such as at a friend's house.

Here's a YouTube video showing what happens with OneDrive Backup, and what happens when you turn it off:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtsNTwRg7iM&t=22s&pp=ygUVcHJvYmxlbSB3aXRoIG9uZWRyaXZl

[Biggles50]

It is a pain Microsoft and other Apps wanting to use Cloud based storage.

The first thing I did when I built my new PC and installed a new Windows 11 was to disable One Drive.  The next was to buy a standalone version of Microsoft Office (I’m not subscribing to 365).

You are far better off buying a USB powered hard drive (I use two Western Digital 2Tb drives, other manufacturers products are available) to store all my personal files, to make it easy I bought two, one coloured Red and the other Blue, the Red is the main store and Blue has a full copy of everything on the Red.  When I am not using these drives ie when browsing they are disconnected.

[carol80]

Thanks for your help. I ended up buying a new external drive as my other 2 were full.
carol

[tomkin]

I just deleted a lot of unnecessary files and this reduced  my onedrive overcapacity by about 700mb.

         They wanted to charge me money to increase my capacity.  They obviously didn't know
     
           that I come from Yorkshire.

          I then decided to just suspend One drive. But doing so messed up one programme.

            Everything else was O.K. So I agree with Biggles.

[Biggles50]

I just deleted a lot of unnecessary files and this reduced  my onedrive overcapacity by about 700mb.

         They wanted to charge me money to increase my capacity.  They obviously didn't know
     
           that I come from Yorkshire.

          I then decided to just suspend One drive. But doing so messed up one programme.

            Everything else was O.K. So I agree with Biggles.

We have Adobe’s photographic create cloud plan and that thing also wants to store files to their Cloud as well.

Apple’s the same as well with their iCloud.

Aaggghhh

[Talacharn]

I have never used One Drive and back-up to an external hard drive.
Recently I started using Norton and they keep wanting my to save everything on their Cloud.
With all, it is a way to keep you using them.
I will not continue with Norton, and do not want them to keep my files.