Cats and Trails and Garden Tales
Musings on cats, travel, gardens and life
New PC and MS One Drive – Yay or Nay?
I got a new Desktop PC last week and I like it. It’s All-in-One so takes up little space, has all the extra storage I hoped for and it’s fast, really fast.
But one thing irks me, and it’s Microsoft’s pushiness with OneDrive. It comes loaded as the default for storage; documents and photos no longer save to the hard drive; they save automatically to OneDrive.
I already have a system in place for my photos and I back them up to an external drive. I have no desire to have them in cyberspace, as secure as they claim that to be, nor to be pestered continually about syncing them up across devices.
I checked with the boys as many of the pictures are of them.
“You mean my pictures would be floating in a cloud?” asked Tiger.
“I understand your concerns perfectly, Sue,” said Benji. “It’s a control issue.”
Maybe I’m old fashioned, but that’s it, indeed.
I need to make a decision before I’m too far down the OneDrive path. There’s plenty of information on the web about undoing this default, so others must also be unhappy with it.
How about you?
Do you use OneDrive?
How do you manage your photos?
~ Susanne
Cats and Trails and Garden Tales 
I bought an HP PC with an SSD drive for speed, but the add-on of a 1TB hard drive. I never use One Drive, or Dropbox. The Cloud is a mystery to me, and I am sure it is vulnerable. I prefer to see what is stored on my PC, and do not trust the ‘ether’ of the Internet, Susanne.
Best wishes, Pete.
That makes sense to me too, Pete. I don’t like Microsoft making the decisions on where my documents are stored, and nothing is perfectly secure. I’m thinking I’ll be undoing this default soon.
I would junk it, Susanne. But that is my default option. 🙂
First, your cats are so beautiful Susanne! I have not had a Windows machine in several years and wouldn’t know how to properly use one but I 100% understand your frustration. I would change the default location to somewhere else soon. I use Dropbox cloud storage for my photography but also back everything up to an external drive as you do. Good thinking!
Thanks for your comment. 🙂 I’m still uncertain about what to do, but I’m inclined to save to my hard drive, as the default. I’m still a bit uncomfortable with storing things ‘on the cloud,’ but could change later if I wanted to.
I’ve been using the cloud for a few years now and have had zero incidents, Susanne. I believe that you would be fine safety-wise. Without it, I would have a much more difficult time moving my photography onto and off of my MacBook.
I recently bought a new PC too and it had OneDrive set as the default save location! I unchecked that and save to local hard drive only. I have kept the One Drive app installed and sometimes I get a pop-up reminding me that I have not set it to save but I just ignore those. If storage space becomes an issue, then I will just use an external hard drive – I will not be using the cloud. Good luck.
Thanks for your comment! I’m glad to know you were able to change the default to save to your hard drive only. I will do that too and hope there are no unforeseen consequences.
You will find it just a case of toggling the item in the settings menu. If you can’t find how to do so then I will happily send screen shots if needed. Good luck! 🤞
Thanks so much! I’ll fiddle with it later on today and if I need help, I’ll let you know! 🙂
I’m happy using the cloud as default. If someone steals my laptop they don’t steal my docs or photos.
Glad to hear you’re using it successfully, especially if you mainly use a laptop. I save all my photos from my cameras to my desktop and back them up periodically to another external drive. The only reason I might choose to use OneDrive would be if I wanted to access these photos from my phone or laptop. For now, I have no need, so I’ll probably not use OneDrive for storage.
When I bought my new PC it came with MS one drive. Although I have Dropbox premium, amazon photos and god knows what else, I let One Drive access the files. It doesn’t hurt anything and I get a prompt each day that shares my memories for that day. I was glad to see this because early in my blogging “career” I had saved 1000s of graphics (I had no idea) and I was able to see them all in One Drive and delete them. No need to take up any extra space. since it’s free you might as well use it. Somewhere in my house I have an actual external hard drive. 😉
Interesting, Terri. I’m glad it’s working for you! 🙂 I guess I was irritated that they pushed it on me. (During a recent update on my old PC, all my pictures changed storage location without any notification!) For now, I’m leaning to changing the default storage location, but I’ll keep OneDrive in the background in case I change my mind. It’s still somewhat appealing to me to have my phone and PC accessing the same photo and document files. Though security is still a concern to me.
I use One Drive. I like to work on a document on my laptop or my desk top without having to transfer via flash drive.
That’s definitely the benefit I see. So far, half for, and half against. Thanks for commenting! 🙂
I don’t have anything in the cloud, no docs, no pictures, no video, and no music. I want things that are mine yo be just that…mine. And I don’t want to have to worry about running out of storage space and having to pay to get more. I have a 3 TB hard drive which should be sufficient, plus an external drive. I agree with you 100% on this.
Thanks for your comment! I feel the same as you, but mostly I didn’t like it being pushed on me.
Nice shots of Benji and Tiger. I get a lot of photos printed out at Walgreens so I trust them to hold all the photos I upload to them.
Thank you! Since I share so many photos online, I forget to have them printed! I need to do that sometime soon. 😊
If you open the One Drive folder you can choose which of your hard drive folders sync there and which don’t. I have my documents set to sync as that way I can access them on my tablet too. It’s useful if I draft blog posts while travelling for editing once I’m home, as I often do. But my photos are stored in a separate hard drive which is almost permanently attached to my laptop, and that doesn’t sync with One Drive. I back them up by also saving to another hard drive which is stored separately in the hopes of eluding burglars. But I do sometimes feel should back them up in the cloud too, whether One Drive or some other option.
Thanks for your input, Sarah. It seems that OneDrive is useful for sharing files across multiple devices and storing them in the cloud. I’m more comfortable having my photos and documents on my PC and backup drives and was mainly just irritated by Microsoft’s insistence that I do it their way. I can see using OneDrive occasionally. I rarely draft blog posts away from home, but when I do, I use the mobile app, Jetpack (formerly I used the wordpress app.) It’s not perfect but works okay for a short blog post with photos.
I use the app if I want to actually post while away, e.g. my ‘Postcards from the Road’ series, but i was referring to writing up various things that happen each day that I think may make good posts in the future 🙂 These I write in Word and save until I have a use for them, and have the photos from the trip all sorted and edited to accompany the text.
Ahhh, okay. I get it. Concerning One Drive, It was already telling me to upgrade as I was nearly out of storage when I wasn’t knowingly using it! So I deleted everything off of Onedrive and am remapping to my hard drive.. My photo files are large!
IF you trust the “cloud” and if you enjoy using ever more keystrokes to achieve a desired function and if you like hunting through mislabeled menus for instructions for formerly intuitive processes. Frankly, I don’t trust or like any of it. Susanne, you may wish to consider having a custom computer built for you. After dealing with Microsoft products in the professional world for decades ditto in home computer use, I personally am SO DONE with Microsoft and now working on less onerous solutions. But chacun à son goût.
Thanks for your perspective. I prefer to keep my photos and documents on my hard drives, so I’m planning to ‘detach’ from OneDrive. Others seem to like it for sharing files across devices, but I don’t have that need and I don’t like being pushed into using it by Microsoft,
Seems to me you need an agnostic platform for your documents and photos.
To many of us get tied to subscription based ecosystems depending on the desktop or mobile phone we have. Windows, MacOS or ChromeOS. iPhone or Android.
It’s all preference at the end of the day. My preference is to go down the cloud route but I appreciate that’s not for everyone. I also wouldn’t go for free services. Don’t let your documents and photos make you the product.
True. It’s definitely personal preference. I was mostly bothered with how much MS pushes its products on you, making it hard to untangle from them. I believe they’ve gotten in trouble for that kind of behavior in the past.