Windows 10: Is there a backup function in Windows anymore or only OneDrive sync?

Is there a backup function in Windows anymore or only OneDrive sync? I don't want my desktop PC and laptop PC to end up the same if I ever have to restore either. In other words, I want my backups to be machine specific. While OneDrive sync purports to back up my files, it works to eliminate differences between machines. Struggling to find a solution, without third party software, which I used to have with Windows. Like the idea of backing up to the cloud, but don't want my file structure made the same on both machines. Just spent hours today straightening out a mess created by me turning on O

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OneDrive Placeholders are coming back, now called On-Demand Sync




"At Ignite 2016, Microsoft has just announced that it is bringing Placeholders back to OneDrive on Windows 10. Now, they are not called Placeholders anymore — Microsoft is renaming the feature to “On-Demand Sync” which makes a lot more sense than “Placeholders”.

The company demoed this feature at Microsoft Ignite today, and it works just like it used to previously. As you can see in the screenshot above, the files stored in OneDrive weighed in around 9GB, but the actual size on disk was only around 3MB which is really neat. Of course, this feature isn’t anything new as it was available back in the Windows 8 days. However, Microsoft removed the feature with Windows 10, and after lots of waiting, they are finally coming back.

In case you are not familiar with OneDrive Placeholders, it’s a pretty neat feature which lets you see all of your OneDrive files on your computer — but they are not actually downloaded on your PC. When you open them, OneDrive will download the files on-demand, saving your local space which is really useful, especially if you have a PC that doesn’t have a lot of storage.

While Microsoft didn’t announce when exactly On-Demand Sync will be available to OneDrive users, we suspect it will be available with Windows 10 Redstone 2 — which is expected to arrive early next year. "

OneDrive Placeholders are coming back, now called On-Demand Sync

 

Windows 10 - OneDrive

Right click on the app and one of the properties has an option to not automatically start it. Uncheck, restart the computer, and it should stop. If you want to go another step further, find the OneDrive app in the start menu, right click on it and uninstall.

If that is still insufficient, there is a batch uninstaller for OneDrive available online. I can copy the code here if you need it.

 

Onedrive sync and backup

Hi, a few questions on onedrive, just starting to use it now.

1) I see there is a onedrive folder, if I select the choose folders in the app, it only offers me stuff in that onedrive folder to sync. How do I sync other folders like 'mydocuments' 'mypictures' or some other folder I have on my desktop?

2) I see also there is a 'backup' choice in the onedrive app, that one seems to offer mydocuments, mypictures, myvideos' etc. Years ago I picked one drive backup for a pc I used to have, it backed up for a while , then it removed ALL the files that it backed up so they weren't on my pc anymore. That was annoying, I had to download them all again in zip format and manually put them all back on my pc. Does choosing backup always remove the files from the pc as it backs them up? If there is a way, and I pick backup for all those folders, will it keep syncing them or do I have to backup every day for important files?

What I want to do, is just sync files and folders so I can also sync them on another PC so they both match all the time. Any help would be very appreciatd, thanks!