Windows 10: OneDrive complaining about duplicate files (pictures)

I see a lot of complaints about Duplicates on OneDrive, but my problem is the opposite - I can't upload (Sync) duplicated files (pictures).


I have a Laptop with around a 24 GB Documents and a 100 GB Pictures folder stored on my OneDrive cloud.


I have an OLD Laptop that has stopped working (will not boot) and I have retrieved the hard drives from it. One drive is bad (I guess the one it was trying to boot from), BUT the other drive is readable via one of the USB external hard drive connector kits. The Documents and Pictures folders on this drive are still accessible and readable, from this "F:" drive.


For archival purposes, I would like to upload the older Documents and Pictures folders onto the OneDrive cloud. So, on my first attempt, I renamed the Documents folder on the F: drive as "Documents 2" and copied it into the OneDrive folder on my PC (laptop) -- and during the Syncing process, OneDrive comes back with an error message saying that 20,000 files are duplicated. And yes, this may be so because the Documents folder on the older, broken laptop are just a much earlier version of the Documents folder on my current Laptop.


Thinking OneDrive was smart enough (or maybe dumb enough) to think/see the "Documents 2" folder has a bunch of files with the same name as are in the "Documents" folder (because of the "Documents" name) it already had stored in the OneDrive cloud, I renamed the old Documents folder to be "Old Laptop Docs) and tried the upload again by copying the "Old Laptop Docs" into the OneDrive folder on my PC - same result - do you want to replace or skip. Well, I don't want to do either, I want a somewhat dupplicated Documents folder archived separately on the OneDrice cloud.


Why Is OneDrive refusing to let me Sync this old Documents folder (under a new name) - so that I can upload these old folders for archival purposes.


ron in round rock

:)

 

onedrive duplicating my folders...

Hi.

Again, onedrive is going crazy and is duplicating my main folder, full of subfolders. It's locking me out of all my files. I have windows 10, Office 365 home. I paused synch at the moment before I have 1000 copy of my folder, which I can't open anyway!
Please don't ask me any question that will further delay the repair. Simply give me a step by step solution and then improve onedrive so this won't happen again to so many of us. I suggest you also add "onedrive" in the list of "Windows Topics" below since
thousands of users have issues with it.

Thanks

Michel

*** Email address is removed for privacy ***

 

OneDrive resulted in duplicate Documents folders, can't merge

I did try restore but it wouldn't let me. The result was the same, that being that it complained of there already being a system folder there (i.e., users\Chris\Documents, etc.)

I just looked in HKCU... as suggested and found the folders defined as "C:\Users\Chris\OneDrive\...". Interestingly, I found a couple of GUIDs other than the Download folder you referred to above. Both point to "%UserProfile%\OneDrive\...". They duplicate
the explicitly named Personal and Pictures folders assigned to "C:\Users\Chris\OneDrive\...", i.e., they point to the same folder.

Only Personal, Pictures and Desktop are assigned using the C:\Users\Chris\OneDrive string. As above, Personal and Pictures are duplicated as GUIDs. Desktop is not duplicated.

Can I just delete the GUID duplicates of Personal and Pictures (not Downloads) and change the OneDrive entries to "%UserProfile%\...," as some others are assigned?

Is it atypical that Cache is defined as "C:\Users\Chris\AppData\...", unlike other AppData folders defined using "%UserProfile%\..."?

Edit: if editing HKCU directly results in the duplicate folders remaining, that's fine. I can just move the contents of the unwanted folders into the corresponding defined system folder, then delete the duplicate folders.

 

Finding duplicate files

Hey hey,

During the years the backups have just accumulated in random places, essentially, and I would like to clean up. Is there a program that can search for duplicate files? And by that I mean identical files. I tried dupeGuru, but that somehow found ... all files to be identical I guess? Like how a bunch of jpg's with different names, sizes and locations being marked 100% identical, or how a bunch of xls-files with completely different everything also were 100% matches with each other. I don't need any fancy functions, just a list of the files that share the name and filesize and created/last write dates.