Skydrive & Libraries.

[BruceBanner]

Can anyone help me confirm my thoughts on Skydrive and my proposal to use it effectively (as I have inherited 300gb Skydrive not currently being used). It appears to me to be somewhat different to dropbox etc (which I also have limited experience using).
Basically my intention is to replace my Libraries on my Desktop Win 8 Pro (not 8.1) PC (My Pictures, My Documents, My Music etc) to being something that when I add files/take away (delete) and make changes they would be mirrored in Skydrive Cloud (this possible?).

I have skydrive (explorer) on my desktop or rather C:\Users\Bruce\SkyDrive (i see the little cloud icon in system tray etc).

If I were to use those folders contained within Skydrive Explorer (Documents/Pictures/Public, currently empty) then what seems to happen is that data thrown in their actually resides on the C: as well as getting synced to Skydrive, that right? (thereby doubling up if the contents are also elsewhere). It's like MS way of saying 'we've created a special place whereby data put here on the hdd will be synced to the cloud, rather than for example allowing users to right click various folders on the PC and giving the option to 'send to the cloud'...

So... seeing as my C: is actually just a 128gb SSD intended for programs only, I need to relocate my Skydrive folders to being not on C: but instead on my other hdds connected to the pc (where there is larger volumes of space free).

My current Libraries are actually all on other hdds, or rather the Library location is still C: but the folders such as Documents, Music and Pictures etc contained within the libraries are pointing to elsewhere (D: and E: etc).

1. It appears to me that what I should be doing is effectively killing off the idea of my current Libraries (not being dumb to delete actual data) and instead use Libraries and everything within the Library pointing to Skydrive Folders exclusively. If I understand correctly the Skydrive Folders in Explorer, they are actually ON the HDD (wherever u choose \Users\Bruce\SkyDrive location/drive to be) as well as being THE ONLY place that will sync with skydrive in the cloud. At the moment there is no current way to right click a random folder in explorer and say “Sync this with the Skydrive cloud etc, so u have to work with what yer given and that is the C:\Users\Bruce\SkyDrive folders (default location of course). Once you place data in that location the hdd (C: in this case) seems to fill up AND the cloud begins to sync. But should u not have internet connection, u can still mess around with files in this location, they will just sync with Skydrive next time internet connection is reestablished, bascially using and accessing these files in an offline manner is fine.
   
   Is this right?
   
   Basically I’m hoping that when I add a new picture from my camera (for example), and then copy it to Library>My Pictures, it will now be also stored in Skydrive cloud as well because ‘My Pictures’ will no longer be D:\Users\Bruce but D:\Users\Bruce\SkyDrive\Pictures etc. (because I will have also changed the location of the Skydrive folders from C: > D: see step 2)

1. rename location of Skydrive, take it off C:\Users\Bruce\SkyDrive and put on D:\Users\Bruce\SkyDrive (as I have only 30gb space left on C: but over 500gb on D: etc)
2. Copy my data that exists already on my hdd (My Pictures, My Music etc) into D:\Users\Bruce\SkyDrive appropriate folders (thereby currently doubling up on data temporarily). Create NEW folders in that Skydrive Explorer location (such as Music).
3. Check that the data is also syncing to Skydrive
4. Delete the current folder locations for current Libraries D:\Users\Eddy and now point ONLY to (add/include folder) D:\Users\Bruce\SkyDrive folders in the Libraries.
5. Delete the old data that’s in D:\Users\Eddy as I now have that data in the skydrive folders on D: as well as Skydrive cloud?
   
   This sound about right?

Or have i got this completely wrong?

Cheers,

Bruce

 

[Brink]

Hello Bruce,

If you like, you could do this to add your SkyDrive folders to your libraries, and have the SkyDrive folders set as the default save to location when you save anything into the libraries.

1) Check to make sure that the SkyDrive folders are added to the appropriate libraries. Ex: Music to Music -> etc...

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/12954-library-add-folder-windows-8-a.html​

2) Set the default and/or public save location of each library to be the SkyDrive folder added to the library.

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorial...efault-public-save-locations-windows-8-a.html​

3) If you have enough hard drive space on your PC, then you might also consider to set your SkyDrive folders to be "available offline" so you'll always have access to the files in them if you should ever find yourself without an internet connection.

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/28148-skydrive-available-offline-online-windows-8-1-a.html​

Hope this helps.

 

[BruceBanner]

Cheers, that helps a little (and I kinda knew some of that stuff) but I don't think its quite the permanent way forward for me. Perhaps if i explain in a little more detail.

so..
C: is 128gb SSD with Win 8 OS and pretty much just programs (40gb free)
D: is 1tb 'My Documents' (Music, Pics, Docs etc) with 450gb free


in addition to this i have external hdd backing up the above (weekly).

I live in a bushfire prone zone area and a recent scare got me to thinking more seriously about cloud storage/backups. I recently purchased a Surface 2 in addition to having win 8 as my main desktop pc and therefore came to having 200gb free space in addition to the 100gb i already had with skydrive prior to s2 purchase.

The 'My Documents' is the only content (and only some of, not all) that I would really be devasted about losing, such as family pictures, music and important docs.

It seems to me that the way forward is to stop using the Win 8 native Libraries (indeed for the above setup I had to remove the default Libraries that were all pointing to the C: and replace with new ones pointing to D: )

I guess what I'm really asking is if once I change the location of the Skydrive Folders from C: to D:, and then once I copy the existing data from the D: into the new Skydrive folders (temporarily doubling up of same data), once i set the new save location to being skydrive, get the libraries to point to skydrive folders then this task is complete? If i didn't make them available offline then they wouldn't take up space on the hdd at all? But once you do then it puts the data physically on the hdd as well?

Ideally the ordering of how things done would be copy My Pictures into the Skydrive>My Pictures and THEN sync to skydrive, rather than copying the data to skydrive (then its syncing straight away) then once fininished starts being dumb and copying the files from skydrive back to pc via the 'make available offline' method.

I can see things getting messy in what really should be straight forward..

 

[bassfisher6522]

This might be what your looking for.....

Change The Default Location Of SkyDrive Folder In Windows

and this.....

Microsoft Finally Makes It Possible to Change SkyDrive Location in Windows 8.1 RTM

 

[Brink]

and since the SkyDrive is just a user folder....

User Folders - Change Default Location - Windows 7 Help Forums

You could do the same as I posted above, but make the SkyDrive folders "Available online-only" to not have the files stored locally on your PC at all, and only saved to your online SkyDrive (cloud). This way it really wouldn't matter if SkyDrive is located on C, since the files are actually stored on the online SkyDrive (cloud).

 

[BruceBanner]

and since the SkyDrive is just a user folder....

User Folders - Change Default Location - Windows 7 Help Forums

You could do the same as I posted above, but make the SkyDrive folders "Available online-only" to not have the files stored locally on your PC at all, and only saved to your online SkyDrive (cloud). This way it really wouldn't matter if SkyDrive is located on C, since the files are actually stored on the online SkyDrive (cloud).

I think this is where some of my confusion came in, because when I tested the Skydrive folders I'm pretty sure I saw my C: losing space (therefore leading me to think that it is indeed a location on the C: that gets filled up like any other, but also acts as a place where Skydrive will Sync). I obviously have not ticked a 'Available online-only' box as if I did this I imagine no space will be taken up on the C:

Still I prefer to have data both physically and in the cloud, the idea being the changes i make to files on the PC would be mimicked 'up there' so to speak.

 

[Brink]

Yeah, using "Available online-only" would have the files not be saved locally on your PC anymore.

However, with the new smart files feature for SkyDrive, you may still have a small bit of information for the file saved on your PC to have as reference.

SkyDrive introduces smart files in Windows 8.1

 

[BruceBanner]

Ok, so is there any last words in how best to do this 'migration'? I'm worried copying my files that exist in D:\Users\Bruce to Skydrive folders will involve them FIRST going to the cloud (taking a LONG TIME, we are after all talking about over 200gb of data in total), and then 'making available offline' (so that they DO reside on the computer as well as cloud) being copied from Cloud back to PC :.
Ideally I want a straight copy from Users to Skydrive and then the Sync to Skydrive cloud to work in the background over a number of hours (possibly days) till complete.

And am i right in saying that when i make changes on Skydrive folders (the ones available offline, ie on the PC), the changes will be reflected in the Skydrive cloud also (once its synced)?

 

[Brink]

Yeah, you want to set all of your SkyDrive folders to "Available offline" for now.

Afterwards, copy all the files you wanted into the SkyDrive folders.

When finished, you could set one SkyDrive folder at a time to "available online-only" and wait until it's finished syncing before doing another folder to not have to much trying to sync to your online SkyDrive at once.

With that much data, you might also consider if your ISP limits you on how much you can upload/download from the internet. You would want to go over your limit and get a high bill. Some ISPs give you unlimited usage during overnight hours, so you might check with your ISP to see what you plan allows you first.

 

[BruceBanner]

Thank you for that, I will try those steps, see how i go.

My ISP has unlimited Upload (just extremely sucky speeds here in oz), and my downloads is 500gb/month, should be fine but as u say one at a time sounds best.

Guys thank you for yer help

Bruce

 

[Brink]

You're welcome Bruce. Please let us know how it went.