# "OneDrive"



## Songbird_2016 (Jun 19, 2011)

Can anyone please explain what's OneDrive and its benefits? I have that icon in my taskbar but haven't signed in.


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## axe0 (Jun 15, 2016)

Onedrive is similar to dropbox and google drive. It's a cloud service that allows you to upload your files to Microsoft's servers which you can then share and won't lose in case of a hard drive failure.


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## spunk.funk (May 13, 2010)

_One Drive_ is Microsoft's _"Cloud" _service. You can store files on here as backup and it is stored in the _"Cloud"_ or Microsoft Servers. You can setup _Sync_ to automatically backup your personal files as they change. You have 10 GB's of space available for free. More is available for a small fee. 
I don't use it and some people have problems with One Drive taking over their User files.


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## Songbird_2016 (Jun 19, 2011)

Okay. What are the steps for signing-in .. does it require configuration, downloads etc.?


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## axe0 (Jun 15, 2016)

You can sign in with your Microsoft account, if you do not have a Microsoft account yet but would like to have one then you can create an account at Microsoft account | Sign In or Create Your Account Today – Microsoft.

Windows 10 comes with One drive built-in, which means you do not have to download anything else to use it.

If you want to, or don't like some settings, you can always change them under 'Help & Settings' > 'Settings'. The first tab you'll see is the one where you can manage any accounts that you want to have on your PC (you can have multiple accounts linked).
There are some other settings you may want to look into if, for example, 

you have a limit as to how much data (upload/download) onedrive can use,
you want to automatically synchronize photos and videos, if you want t
you want to have files on-demand (download files as you use them and have everything else in the cloud only)
etc.










While it's a relatively simple service/app, it has a lot to offer. Because it's a built-in service, Microsoft integrated some features in Windows Explorer directly which help you in saying what you want to have locally available.









Seeing the screenshot, I almost forgot about the personal vault. It's something relatively new that's meant to keep things a bit more private, you can use it to store important documents that nobody else should have access to. This vault is private because you need to login to access it, this log in is if I remember correctly the same thing you use to login in your Microsoft account. This login can be a password, a pincode, or if you have it configured 2FA using your mobile. I don't know if this is on purpose, but shortly after the introduction of the personal vault, I've only been able to access the personal vault from the onedrive website.

To give a more complete picture, I've been using onedrive for years and the main downside to it, because I'm using it on multiple PC's, is the synchronization between devices. You may get file conflicts when you have a file that was altered on different PC's but not uploaded yet, in such a case onedrive does not know which one you want to keep and will let you know about it. I've found that it can sometimes be a bit troublesome to resolve it.

One other issue I personally experience a lot, whenever I am developing a program in the projects folder, onedrive tends to automatically try to upload each and every single change. When that happens onedrive notifies me quite often that it can't upload a file because it's still in use, that happens when I'm not finished with what I was doing. It is logical though, onedrive can only upload files that aren't in use by another program, but the notifications are rather annoying for me.

I hope that helps you a bit.


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## bassfisher6522 (Jul 22, 2012)

Songbird_2016 said:


> Can anyone please explain what's OneDrive and its benefits? I have that icon in my taskbar but haven't signed in.


I avoid it like the plauge.....simply because of it's intrusiveness and minimal storage space of 5 gb. MS attempt to get one to buy more space. Therefore I simply uninstall it. Some swear by it and others like myself will use other means for storage and backups.


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## Corday (Mar 3, 2010)

For people with home computer(s) plus a laptop, use it on one of the devices as to not overfill free limit. Still backup by all other means. Since OneDrive updates every time you restart, it stays current.


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## Songbird_2016 (Jun 19, 2011)

Many thanks for everyone's opinion. So, I would assume, in a nutshell it's not a necessity for home computer/laptop, right?


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## britechguy (Dec 6, 2019)

It's not a necessity, period. It's optional cloud storage space you can choose to use or not to use. (I'm in the latter camp, and wish I could finally figure out a way to make MS-Office stop "offering" to save to OneDrive by default and - believe me - I've tried and so far none of the prescribed methods has worked).


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## spunk.funk (May 13, 2010)

@britechguy make sure you have *Save Word files to Computer *selected How do I stop Word saving to OneDrive? then set a default path (ie) Documents folder


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## Songbird_2016 (Jun 19, 2011)

britechguy said:


> It's not a necessity, period. It's optional cloud storage space you can choose to use or not to use. (I'm in the latter camp, and wish I could finally figure out a way to make MS-Office stop "offering" to save to OneDrive by default and - believe me - I've tried and so far none of the prescribed methods has worked).


Does it in any way affect the performance of the computer?


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## Corday (Mar 3, 2010)

Songbird_2016 said:


> Does it in any way affect the performance of the computer?


IMO, only at startup.


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## djbillyd (Jul 25, 2010)

Songbird_2016 said:


> Okay. What are the steps for signing-in .. does it require configuration, downloads etc.?


STAY AWAY FROM PERSONAL VAULT, unless, of course, you have classified state secrets on your computer. That junk locks the vault after 20 minutes of inactivity..., not inactivity with the computer, but 20 of not doing something with personal vault. It is not worth the trouble. I buy the 1 TB of storage because I save everything to OneDrive, but I have no state secrets either, so no personal vault for me!


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## HavFun (Oct 26, 2009)

Do you trust anything in "the cloud"? If you do, using OneDrive will sound like a good idea (but the 5GB of free storage is so small it doesn't really help much in this day of new computers with 1 TB hard discs or 1/2 TB solid state discs being common). You know all those "private" photos and videos that are always showing up online? Those people trusted "the Cloud". Should you trust the Cloud? If you don't think the answer to this question is "yes", you don't know enough about computers yet.


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## axe0 (Jun 15, 2016)

djbillyd said:


> STAY AWAY FROM PERSONAL VAULT, unless, of course, you have classified state secrets on your computer. That junk locks the vault after 20 minutes of inactivity..., not inactivity with the computer, but 20 of not doing something with personal vault. It is not worth the trouble. I buy the 1 TB of storage because I save everything to OneDrive, but I have no state secrets either, so no personal vault for me!


I like to have documents that contain personal information in the vault. Yes, the personal vault locks after 20 minutes of inactivity. The personal vault page does describe that the vault will be locked after a period of inactivity. The meaning behind that period may not be obvious for some, but for me, it's clear as day that it means inactivity of the vault.





Protect your OneDrive files in Personal Vault


Personal Vault is a place in OneDrive with an extra layer of security where you can store your most important or sensitive files and photos.




support.microsoft.com




.


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## djbillyd (Jul 25, 2010)

Of course it is! That wasn't assuming that no one else knew that, but I'm just pleased as punch that you do.


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## remoeley (Oct 14, 2020)

axe0 said:


> Seeing the screenshot, I almost forgot about the personal vault. It's something relatively new that's meant to keep things a bit more private, you can use it to store important documents that nobody else should have access to. This vault is private because you need to login to access it, this log in is if I remember correctly the same thing you use to login in your Microsoft account. This login can be a password, a pincode, or if you have it configured 2FA using your mobile. I don't know if this is on purpose, but shortly after the introduction of the personal vault, I've only been able to access the personal vault from the onedrive website.


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