Windows 10: OneDrive Changes Drive Path on Local Computer

I have no idea where my stuff is. I don't know how to safely delete things, or stop OneDrive from acting on its own.


I'm confused because I can't tell whether I'm moving stuff from my computer, or from OneDrive.


That's because OneDrive took the audacious liberty to rename paths on my local drive. I see "/OneDrive/" inserted into all my drive paths whether I'm looking at the OneDrive folder or the local "My Computer" folder in File Explorer.


That has caused me to incorrectly move things, because I thought I was either moving things locally, or on OneDrive, depending on what I'm doing.


Because of this, I stopped OneDrive from syncing my files or so I thought... it's still moving things around behind the scene. But I have found no way whatsoever to return my original local path names so that local folders no longer have the /OneDrive/ in the path. It should NOT be there.


Now my hard drive is so full, I'm trying to take things off locally and move them to OneDrive. I wish to have reliable copies on OneDrive so I can nuke my PC and completely reload Windows to try to return local paths to their original state without the /OneDrive/ in the path name.


My fear is that as soon as I connect to OneDrive again to restore the items I sent there prior to nuking my drive, it will again take the liberty of changing my path names again.


How do I use OneDrive as a simple online storage, without it interleaving itself into all my local drive paths? I want total control of what is on my local drive, and what goes to OneDrive online.


If nobody can explain this in simple English I will have to cease my subscription and find a solution that doesn't take over my local system.


Please help.

:)

 

Onedrive removes local files and changes paths

When I try to backup my local folders (Documents, Pictures, etc), Onedrive deletes the files in my local folders. It also renames all the paths to these folders in the Quick access field, from, for instance, ".../Myusername/Documents" to "...Myusername/Onedrive/Documents".
How can I undo this behaviour and succeed with a normal backup? Can the reason be that I have changed my user account name? When doing that, the old account name is still used in the file structure which perhaps can cause this confusion. This is quite serious,
I got my whole business stored among those files that Onedrive just deletes and moves out of my control.

 

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 vs. Local drive and back up drive

It's been close to a year now that I've been wanting to organize my photos/documents to be all in one place. I've posted other questions regarding this thru the year and am finally going to take the time to get things right in the next week or so. Currently I have all my photos/documents on a local drive AND on onedrive. I back up the local drive to an external hard drive.
This is probably (hopefully) a simple question and it's pretty much the last question I have. If I delete all the photos/documents on the local drive (as the same files are available on onedrive) and change my back up path for the external hard drive to back up the onedrive folder instead will those items in the onedrive folder be available on my external hard drive as an actual photo/document or is onedrive on my computer mearly a placeholder? I hope I make sense. I view my local files as actual physical photos, want to make sure onedrive is the same and not somewhat like a ghost image. I want to know that if microsoft's onedrive servers blew up that I could go to the "local" onedrive folder on my computer and/or the folder on my external hard drive and find the same photos/documents and be able to print them, send them, etc.
Thanks for any help.