Windows 10: 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.

:)

 

Cannot add network folder to windows backup

How do I back up a network drive to my local external drive? I have a shared folder on a network drive that I would like to backup to an external drive on my Win 10 machine. But when I open Windows Backup to select the folder, I see only my local drives
and my OneDrive but not any network drives.

Moved from: Windows / Apps on Windows 10 / Other Windows apps / Tools

 

Backing up a Flash Drive to OneDrive

Let me Google that for you.

 

OneDrive uses selective sync. Every file, whatever file type shown in %userprofile%\OneDrive folder is physically located on your computer and when copied to another location on your local machine, the actual file will be copied / backed up.

To select which files you want to be synced to local computer, see this tutorial: OneDrive Selective Sync - Choose Folders in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums

Notice that removing or renaming a file in OneDrive folder also removes it / renames it on OneDrive cloud. Copying a file to another location will keep it on OneDrive, moving it to another storage location will remove it from OneDrive.

 

I am setting it up so all files are synced between onedrive and my computer. What I'm trying to figure out is once I remove all the files that are on my c: drive (local) under users, pictures/documents and just use the onedrive folder are those the same type of file as what was locally on my c drive under users?

 

Yes. The files stored in your OneDrive folder and subsequently in any of its subfolders (OneDrive\Documents, OneDrive\Pictures and so on) only have one difference when compared to the files let's say in your Pictures folder: they are also synced to OneDrive cloud.

A photo C:\Users\AnyUsername\Pictures\A_cow_and_my_exwife_(cow_at_left).jpg is absolutely identical than photo C:\Users\AnyUsername\OneDrive\ThingsToForget\A_cow_and_my_exwife_(cow_at_left).jpg. These two identical files are both saved on your physical computer in two different locations. The latter is also synced to and available on Microsoft OneDrive - Access files anywhere. Create docs with free Office Online. because it's located in one of the OneDrive subfolders.

 

Thank you, that's what I wanted to know as I want to delete all the "users" files because they are taking up space and there's no need as they are on onedrive and synced in the onedrive folder as well. I believe that are two separate entities. Trying to simplify my life and use the onedrive folder instead of the c drive folder!

 

You do know that Windows 10 only comes with 5GB storage space?
Unless you have an Office 365 subscription(then you get 1TB free).

For prices to upgrade the storage space see: Microsoft OneDrive Plans

 

Something I forgot, thanks @Cliff S for reminding me:

At the moment new OneDrive users only get 5 GB free storage. Additional storage can be bought in entities of 50 GB costing £/$/€ 2 per month, Office 365 subscriptions include 1 TB OneDrive storage, see plans and prices: Microsoft Office Home

You can always see you available storage at bottom left when signed in to OneDrive at https://onedrive.live.com:




Clicking the X GB used of X GB / TB you'll get to Manage Storage page. Click Get more storage link on left pane to subscribe to more storage:

 

To see how much you have and are currently using, when you sign in online:

 

Yes, I'm aware thanks to the numerous emails they send me, ha ha. But, I figure my pictures are safer and easier to access/sync on the cloud paying 1.99 a month rather than just on my pc with a back up. Of course I only have 7 gb's of data which burns my butt.....I had 15gb's of free data which was perfect until they decided to change things. Still, it's worth 25 bucks a year I guess. *Smile

 

First, my apologies, fellow esteemed geek Cliff and I were posting at the same time, you got same information several times *Smile

Anyway, a tip, a suggestion I think you should at least consider: for $99.99 a year you got 5 Office 365 licenses, each of 1 TB of storage. A single Office 365 license costs $69.99 a year, with 1 TB of OneDrive storage. That's a bit more than double the yearly cost of 50 GB extra storage, giving you 20 times that.

In addition, both plans come with full Office 2016 suite of applications.

Buy Microsoft Office 365 Home Personal subscriptions

 

Definitely can't afford that and have no need for it whatsoever. I have an older (not too old) version of office that I use once in a while but rarely. I thought of doing it for the first year as it's free but would rather just pay for the storage and be done with it.
No problem on the duplication of replies, the more help the better!

 

One really nice thing with OneDrive, is you can choose exactly what you want to sync, using file explorer's right click menu(right click the OneDrive folder itself).

 

So just to clarify one last time, if I remove the folders (like picutres/documents) from my c drive under users it will no way affect the folders I have in the onedrive slot correct?