Damn OneDrive
OneDrive is a Microsoft software that allows you to backup files to their cloud server. It was pre-installed in my laptop and I left it as it was because I thought it was a good idea to have backup.
However, recently I realised that it had its own Documents folder i.e. it wasn't backing up files from my the user's Documents folder where my important files are.
A quick search on the internet revealed that, stupidly, OneDrive doesn't allow you to select which folders you want it to backup. Then I found a workaround here given by Matthew Broady:
" A Workaround easiest, although it would be a useful feature.
Find the Address of the folder you want to be synced. (ie. C:\Games\). Copy it.
Find the OneDrive location you wish for it to sync to. Hold shift and right click. On the context menu, click open command window here. In it type "mklink /j "YourCustomFolderName" "Address of Location(i.e. C:\Games\)"", without the outer punctuation marks.
This is like a shortcut that tells any programs that look there to look at another directory.
This will sync anything inside the address you tell it to the folder created in a onedrive directory. "
It worked well but I was a little perturbed that the user's Documents folder was no longer (visibly) shown in Desktop/Username directory. It still existed in the C:\Users\Username directory. I thought I would just give it a try and adjust around it.
However, things came to a head when I discovered that there was simply not enough space to backup all files in Documents folder. Oh well.
Since I do manually backup a select few personal files to Dropbox and all work files to Google Drive, I decided to make do without One Drive. Problem is that, unlike normal programme, it's not straightforward to uninstall One Drive. In the end, I followed this set of instructions from this website and removed One Drive (and its remnants, as it was still trying to back up files even though it couldn't).
Next problem was to make the user's Document visible again in Desktop/Username directory. I know it was there because when I attempted to create a new folder named Documents, a message popped up telling me there was already a folder there.
Again, I searched (thank you internet!) and found this website. I tried the "restore default location" method but didn't work. So I used BAT file downloaded from the website to help me. It worked! I repeated the process for the Pictures folder too.
Phew!
However, recently I realised that it had its own Documents folder i.e. it wasn't backing up files from my the user's Documents folder where my important files are.
A quick search on the internet revealed that, stupidly, OneDrive doesn't allow you to select which folders you want it to backup. Then I found a workaround here given by Matthew Broady:
" A Workaround easiest, although it would be a useful feature.
Find the Address of the folder you want to be synced. (ie. C:\Games\). Copy it.
Find the OneDrive location you wish for it to sync to. Hold shift and right click. On the context menu, click open command window here. In it type "mklink /j "YourCustomFolderName" "Address of Location(i.e. C:\Games\)"", without the outer punctuation marks.
This is like a shortcut that tells any programs that look there to look at another directory.
This will sync anything inside the address you tell it to the folder created in a onedrive directory. "
It worked well but I was a little perturbed that the user's Documents folder was no longer (visibly) shown in Desktop/Username directory. It still existed in the C:\Users\Username directory. I thought I would just give it a try and adjust around it.
However, things came to a head when I discovered that there was simply not enough space to backup all files in Documents folder. Oh well.
Since I do manually backup a select few personal files to Dropbox and all work files to Google Drive, I decided to make do without One Drive. Problem is that, unlike normal programme, it's not straightforward to uninstall One Drive. In the end, I followed this set of instructions from this website and removed One Drive (and its remnants, as it was still trying to back up files even though it couldn't).
Next problem was to make the user's Document visible again in Desktop/Username directory. I know it was there because when I attempted to create a new folder named Documents, a message popped up telling me there was already a folder there.
Again, I searched (thank you internet!) and found this website. I tried the "restore default location" method but didn't work. So I used BAT file downloaded from the website to help me. It worked! I repeated the process for the Pictures folder too.
Phew!
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