Transcript
Leo Laporte (0:00)
Coming up next on Hands on Windows, we're going to take another look at OneDrive, this time in Windows 11. 24 inch, two.
Lisa Laporte (0:07)
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Leo Laporte (0:17)
Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Hands on Windows. It's another year, another version of Windows, and Another look at OneDrive, which is taken on a new urgency because last year Microsoft started forcing folder backup down everyone's throats. Or down. Or certainly down at least enough people's throats that people have started noticing. I've been talking about this for over a year, but we've done some episodes recently, including the one on local accounts that speak to how you can work around the things that Microsoft is trying to force on us. But I thought it might be worth taking another look because the OneDrive experience is so central to Windows 11. So first. Actually, that's not first. First we should just look at what you get with OneDrive. So OneDrive obviously, is Microsoft's cloud storage service. If you have a Microsoft Account, you get 5 gigabytes of storage for free, and that integrates with Windows 11 if you're using that, or Windows or the Mac if you want to download that application. But five gigabytes isn't a lot. And so there's different ways you can get additional storage. So cheapest is this thing here, Microsoft 365 Basic. This is $2 a month or 1999 a year in the US and you get 100 gigabytes of cloud storage. So it's for an individual, it's the full mill deal other than the amount of storage. So pretty good. There's also the Microsoft 365 family and personal plans. Both of these are 1 terabyte of storage per user, but the family plan gives you six users. So six terabytes across six different user accounts. You can't mix and match. Can't give two terabytes to one or whatever, but you do get six terabytes, which is pretty good. And same thing here, you can pay by month if you want, or you can pay by year. The year, obviously you save, in this case, $20 in the US but pretty good. So I have had a Microsoft 365 family account, probably for as long as you can have one. I don't know how long it's been, but it's been a while. I'm getting up there, as you can see in storage. So once you have that, you can also buy additional storage. So this is going to change soon. But. And I was hoping by the time we recorded it, it would change. But today what you have is 200 gigabytes of additional storage. This is only per month. You can't do this per year or an additional 1 terabyte for $9.99 a month. So someday soon, maybe by the time you see this will actually be other options here, 2 TB and up, they're going to up the amount of storage that you can get additionally on top of your Microsoft 365 subscription. So that is good. Now one thing we talk a lot about here is this process you go through when you set up Windows for the first time. So this is the out of box experience, the thing that you see when you turn on the computer for the first time in Windows 11 Home. You're not going to see this screen. You only see this screen in Windows 11 Pro and then actually not every single time, which is very confusing. But by default, if this computer you have has a Windows 11 home on it, you will be signed up for local, I'm sorry, folder backup, which is a OneDrive feature. That's what this is referencing here. It doesn't actually say that for some reason, but they use the term backup. It's really sync. But by default, Microsoft will sync three of your folders, desktop, documents and pictures with the cloud. Right. And so as you access those folders on your computer, the changes are occurring in the cloud as well. And you'll see that on every device that you sign into. If you do have Pro, you get this screen and you can opt out of it. So I typically choose this myself, but you don't have to. But only save files to this PC will disable this and prevent it from happening. Okay, so here's the Windows 11 desktop. Like I said, OneDrive is central to it. You've got this OneDrive icon down here in the tray. It might be hiding down down here, but you will typically see it out here. Slightly convoluted way of getting into settings, but there's a bunch of stuff that you're going to want to look at in here. So the first one is this Manage Backup button under Sync and Backup. This is that folder backup feature. Right. So I mentioned that by default it will back up these three folders. I've turned it off so they're not on. You can add two more music and videos. You can't add other arbitrary folders, which is kind of a shame. But you this is what they're going to want you to enable. If you don't enable this, like I don't it will pester you. So I get these little pop ups and things and you go into. I bet if I go into the Settings app I might see something about this. No, not today. But sometimes you go in here, it'll say, hey, you know, maybe you should back up. You know, you should probably back up. What do you think about backing up? You should probably do that. But I don't. So I back up other folders. I sync other folders really, but that's how I do things. So there's not too much else here you have to worry about that much. This got disabled for me. As I take screenshots, OneDrive will say, hey, do you want to automatically save those to OneDrive2? And I said no. So it just turned that off. This one doesn't nag you again, so that's kind of nice. The account one is where you would actually unlink this PC if you didn't want to use OneDrive and you already are signed in. You can actually unlink the PC, you can go and delete the local folder, you can prevent OneDrive from running at boot time and you'll effectively not have OneDrive. I think I mentioned this in the probably in the Local accounts episode recently. You can actually uninstall OneDrive in Windows 11. Now I don't recommend that, honestly. It doesn't take up space. If you don't want to use it, just unlink and go into Task Manager or Settings and go into startup apps and just find OneDrive and geez, do I have a lot of services here. And say disabled, you know, just turn. Just don't let it run. It's fine. That works fine.