Dear respected John,
I'm sorry to hear that you've had a negative experience with OneDrive. However, Microsoft does not delete files from a user's local computer without their permission. It is possible that you may have accidentally enabled the OneDrive feature that automatically backs up your files to the cloud. For reference: Sync files with OneDrive in Windows - Microsoft Support
If you would like to restore your files back to your local hard drive, you can do so by downloading or directly copy them from the OneDrive sync folder showing in left bar on the File Explorer and saving them to your computer.

I appreciate your patience and understanding and thank you for your time and cooperation.
Sincerely,
Mia | Microsoft Moderator
I've been fighting this battle for over a year. YES, Microsoft OneDrive does AUTOMATICALLY MOVES FILES WITHOUT PERMISSON. It did not do this previously. I have had OneDrive for years and had only a few folders and 15-20 photos placed there back when it was a manual process, those files were fine there and showed up in explorer after one update as being in the OneDrive folder. Only the files I chose and manually moved to OneDrive were kept there.
But now, some random update automatically syncs ALL files to OneDrive. What is worse, the process doesn't properly organize those files. I have so many important personal and work-related empty folders on my hard drive now, with some only having one or two of the original documents that were there. The ones that OneDrive grabbed (hundreds of documents) are not in the proper folders. Since I had separate drives for specific purposes, OneDrive combined documents and photos from each of them into one area and placed them in the wrong folders.
My experience has been that once they are moved, they are disorganized and not in the same named folder as they were on my computer, and I have lost hundreds of files that can no longer be found.
I work from home and teach online for a State University - nearly every course I have has had files removed from their folders and moved to OneDrive, which previously was not used for Work. The whole process is destroying my coursework and documents that are needed for students. To top it off, now, if you move a file by "moving" it back from OneDrive to the designated external hard drive for Work, Home, or Personal, or try downloading it from OneDrive to a folder on my specifically chosen hard drives designated for Work, School, Home, and Personal filing, - it says you have DELETED the file. If you don't restore it, IT DELETES the files from your hard drive —there is even a warning stating that You have deleted the "XYZ" file, and it cannot be retrieved. If you try the "Stop Using OneDrive," you are effectively removing everything, and the files do NOT return to the original location. So You LOSE files.
I have over 20 years of Geneology files that have been upended and are no longer organized by surname.
My Master's thesis files are obliterated, and one of my programmed online portfolios no longer works because the files can not be located and synced from their original path. To complicate matters even further, Adobe Acrobat started a cloud system that automatically moved PDFs to its cloud, so several of those were moved from my hard drives, while others were moved from OneDrive. Fortunately, I caught that quickly and could retrieve and stop the Adobe auto uploads, but there is no acceptable resolution for OneDrive - it just keeps on going.
The ONLY FIX I have found is to PAUSE OneDrive every 24 Hours to stop the syncing process. Even that is flawed—you have to restart syncing to immediately re-pause it. If you miss the time to restart OneDrive to immediately Pause it again, any new files or the files you downloaded or transferred back to your hard drives will be RE-SYNCED to OneDrive AGAIN!!! It is ridiculous.
To the OP, John, I am ready to join the fight against the invasion of privacy, removal of very personal documentation, and lack of management tools for customer preferences regarding Microsoft's OneDrive.