Using One Drive to automatically back up My Documents folder

Anonymous
2014-05-28T20:37:52+00:00

Hello 

I would like to automatically sync the My Documents folder to One Drive. What is the best way of achieving this ?  The online information on OIneDRive does not make this clear 

Tony

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Files, folders, and storage

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@CmdrKeene 90,631 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
2014-05-29T03:22:52+00:00

Perhaps the easiest way is to set the Documents folder to be saved inside your OneDrive folder.

  1. If you don't already have one there, create a folder named "Documents" inside your OneDrive folder.
  2. Right-click the original Documents folder (not the one created in step 1), and choose Properties
  3. On the Location tab, click Move, and choose the Documents folder you created in step 1.
  4. Confirm that you want to move your Documents folder.

You'll still see a Documents folder inside your C:\Users\Tony folder, but it's actually become a redirect -- anything put there will actually be inside OneDrive (both on your hard drive and, of course, synced up to OneDrive cloud).  You can even do this for your Desktop folder and other special shell folders that have a location tab on their properties.

Windows 8's Internet Explorer already syncs your bookmarks, but if you have a PC using 7 or older, this is also a great way to sync your bookmarks (Favorites).

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@CmdrKeene 90,631 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
2014-05-30T21:58:38+00:00

The "Restore Default Location" button won't be available, but you will certainly be able to put Documents back to the proper location if you decide to do so later.  That warning is actually a bit of a stretch.

It's possible (although incredibly unlikely), that you would have to go set the Documents folder path correct in the registry, but even that is actually pretty quick and easy if you needed to.

In the registry, this value controls which folder is considered the "documents" folder.  It's under HKEY_Current_User\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-08-03T04:35:33+00:00

    Thanks Shawn,

    I still have the question on how to map my Documents folder over to the WD HDD before I map them over to One Drive. That way all my files/photos/music etc. will be synced to the WD instead of taking up space on my SSD.

    I suspect that this would be a two step process... once I've installed Win10 Pro on my SSD and have it stable (drivers, etc.), I would then map my Documents over to the WD and after that is set up map them to One Drive.

    I'm just not sure how to do that.

    Regards,

    John

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  2. @CmdrKeene 90,631 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2016-08-03T03:16:06+00:00

    Boot speed would be the number one enhancement, most noticeable. But really you'd want all your program files (applications, Office, productivity software, games, etc.) installed there.  Actual file storage (videos, pictures, documents) can be on a slower drive because it won't impact you all that much (you are likely only using one single video, picture, or document at a time).  The best advantage of SSD is to have your OS, virtual memory (paging swap file) and programs on it.

    Games would load faster, but keep in mind that games (or any program) doesn't "run" from the hard drive.  It loads it from the drive into RAM memory and runs it there.  So after the game has loaded and got everything into memory, the speed of the drive doesn't matter (much, there's some paging of data back and forth if memory is full).  Your games will load faster (even between levels for example if they have to pull up data from the drive), but the actual game "performance" so to speak won't really benefit from the SSD.

    Windows OS needs about 10 GB of space to install comfortably but I'd say you should assume 50-60 GB of "OS space" on the SSD, and you still have plenty for what sounds like as many programs/games as you would want.  I wouldn't really suggest partitioning it, but that's largely personal preference.

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-08-02T22:38:58+00:00

    Shawn,

    OK... I've got everything ready to go.

    Is there any real advantage to installing Win10 on my 480GB SSD other than boot speed?

    Are there other advantages that would make it worthwhile to install the OS on the SSD? If so, how do I move the default file storage folders over to my WD 1TB HDD (as you mentioned in step 2) so that they don't take up space on the SSD?

    Ideally I would use the SSD only for applications that would take advantage of the speed... such as games.

    Again, thanks for your help here!

    John

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