OneDrive and Symbolic Links

I usually avoid offering unsolicited advice on using Windows but this one is so good it really does deserve to be more widely understood and used.

If you follow Microsoft's tutorial on using OneDrive you first have to move or copy your files/folders into your OneDrive folder. However there is in fact a far more elegant and efficient way to make your files available to OneDrive, by using a feature that is not (yet) built into Windows but can very easily be added without any third party software - symbolic links. Symbolic links are a type of shortcut that makes it appear that files are physically present in a folder when in fact they are actually located somewhere else altogether, and when the real files get updated the symbolic links automatically update too. By creating such links in your OneDrive (or DropBox) folder your files will automatically be copied to your OneDrive (or DropBox) cloud storage and your OneDrive folder will only require negligible space to house the links, no copyning or moving required at all.

It all works like a charm, simple instructions here.

 

Yeah, I well remember SyncToy, but many ppl I suggested it to as a backup tool found the multiple sync choices more than a bit confusing. The beauty of symbolic links is that adding a folder to your OneDrive or DropBox folder simply involves right clicking the folder and selecting Pick Link Source, followed by right clicking the OneDrive or DropBox folder and selecting Drop Symbolic Link. That's it - the folder will be synced in OneDrive or DropBox from then on. Removing folders is equally simple and the whole process does not require the user to move or copy anything at all, or to make any other choices as to what or how to sync.

I'd come across symbolic links before but hadn't understood what they were or how simple and useful they can be.

 

I set this up on one PC, so under C:\Users....\OneDrive the Pictures folder points to my NAS and it was working well (other than taking forever to sync all the photos, but there's a lot there). I just got a new PC and one Drive did not show the Pictures folder locally on the PC. I setup the symbolic link again, but the OneDrive client gives an error that this folder already exists online and to delete it locally so it can download from the server, but it wasn't downloading.

I have OneDrive also setup as a network drive so I can access my photos away from home and the Pictures folder shows there, so I guess not the end of the world if I can't get it syncing locally- can just move new files to the OneDrive network drive, but would be nice to have it all working properly if anyone knows how to fix this!

 

No need for any symbolic links on the new PC, you just need OneDrive. Or am I misunderstanding?

 

2 reasons for the symbolic link on the new PC, unlesss you have another suggestion
1) I don't want the photos that are already on OneDrive downloading and being stored on the local hard drive. The NAS is the same, I want to be able to continue adding photos to my NAS like before and have OneDrive sync them to the cloud.
2) OneDrive doesn't seem to be recognizing that folder locally for some reason (So in the OneDrive library on the new PC I have a Documents folder but no Pictures folder) so guessing new photos wouldn't upload to OneDrive

 

I guess that you can only have one symbolic link to a real folder, and that makes sense, to me anyway. I'll go into think mode and see if I can come up with a workaround.

 

How about mapping the NAS as a network drive on the new PC?