One Drive Seperation

Question

In a nutshell: I want my personal OD to have my game data, and I want my college OD to have my documents and power points.

I had this problem on my old laptop. But now that I have a new one, the problem is back. I want my college account and person account to only sync specific things.

I want my personal OneDrive to not save or sync my school data. And just sync my Steam data

And I want my school OneDrive (my college account) to not pickup any of my steam data; only to have it save my documents and powerpoints.

Both are on my laptop, as my personal account handles well...personal life stuff, And my school account is for college and assignments.

Answer 1

Hi Drew,

Your concern is feasible since personal and work/school OneDrive storage can stay separate and can be used side by side. The main problem is that OneDrive PC folder backup is usually turned on for folders such as Desktop, Documents, etc. So, if your college OneDrive is backing up Documents, and Steam/game saves are also inside Documents like Documents\My Games, your college OneDrive will also pick them up.

That said, to achieve this you need to configure OneDrive backup settings to turn on/off specific folders for each of your OneDrive.

You can try this setup:

• First, go to OneDrive cloud icon > Settings > Account > Add an account and add both of your OneDrive accounts with distinct names, for example: OneDrive - Personal/Games and OneDrive - College/School

For school OneDrive:

• Click the blue OneDrive cloud (school account usually uses blue cloud icon) > select Gear icon > Settings > choose Manage Backup
• Turn on only the folders you want your college account to protect, for example: Documents, Pictures and Desktop.

For personal OneDrive:

• Click the white cloud icon > Gear icon > Settings > Manage Backup
• Since you turn on Documents, Pictures and Desktop for school icon, this time turn these off in personal OneDrive

One important note is that many games save data automatically in places like C:\Users\YourName\Documents\My Games, so if your college OneDrive backs up Documents, then anything in Documents\My Games can get pulled into your college OneDrive. Therefore, you can consider go to Steam and change the default storage folder to a different place outside Documents.

In short, you need to clearly configure where the school-related folders would be (e.g. Documents) then the game data folders should be in a different location (outside Documents). After that, go to OneDrive Manage Backup settings and turn on/off specific folder(s) for each of your OneDrive (turn on Documents in school OneDrive and turn off in personal OneDrive)

Hope this information would be helpful for your concern. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please don’t hesitate to reach out in the comments of this post. I'm happy to assist you further.

Thank you for your patience and understanding. 

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