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Syncing OneDrive to an external hard drive

Anonymous
2021-11-21T19:11:05+00:00

Hi,

I've got 1TB OneDrive storage space (as part of the subscription via my university) which I use for my work files so I can access them in the office as well as my personal laptop (both windows 10). However, the storage space on my laptop SSD is not large enough, so I would like to have my OneDrive sync folder on an external hard drive that I can just plug in when I need to work from home and remove when I'm done. (I have a 1TB Toshiba drive for this). (I want a full local copy of my OneDrive, i.e. I don't want to use selective syncing as I don't know in advance which files I will need to be using, and on-demand syncing is too slow for me when accessing larger files.)

However, I don't understand the microsoft instructions page to do this:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/install-onedrive-on-an-external-drive-6307e24b-d7a4-493f-bf43-47345b2c11fe (Install OneDrive on an external drive)

"If you need to change your OneDrive storage location from your computer to an SD card or other external storage source, you can do so as long as the external drive is non-ejectable. Removable USB drives are not supported."

What does this mean? An external hard drive/storage source is always ejectable/removable right, otherwise it would be called internal? Do I need specific hardware? Or configure my drive in a specific way? (Does the NTFS formatting take care of this?)

The rest of the instructions sound exactly like what I am looking for, but because I am worried about losing data I have not tried it out yet. Does anyone have experience with this?

If I use an external HD, how will my onedrive respond if its for example not plugged in? Will Onedrive automatically detect the folder in my Exteranl HD every time I plug it back in? or do I have to assign it every time I plug it in? Im worried that if I remove the external HD while logged into Onedrive, it will assume the files were deleted and sync that deletion everywhere.

Any help / advice appreciated!

*Moved to Office for Education*

Microsoft 365 and Office | OneDrive | For education | Windows

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous
2021-11-22T07:53:26+00:00

Hi，

Thank you for your question in this community. According to your description of the problem:

To be honest, we do not recommend this method, because it may cause various problems. First, when you connect an external hard drive, your computer will assign a drive letter. Assuming your external hard drive is "I" drive, if You unplug your external hard drive, and plug it in again next time, it may not be "I" Drive. Therefore, this is also the non-removable USB drive mentioned in the article, because it may cause sync problems after unplugging, and it may not be possible to Identify your hard drive，and will cause files lost！

Hope you can support and understand!

Best Regards,

Ethan

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  1. Anonymous
    2021-11-22T17:25:19+00:00

    Hi Ethan,

    Thank you for the response. Ok, yes this is what I was worried about, I'll have to look for another solution then.

    Cheers!

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