OneDrive

At present my daily data backups are stored on a NAS, a physical drive that could fail/get stolen/etc, so I'm playing around with OneDrive as a possible alternative or parallel backup. It seems to work OK on my Win 7 main machine but I'm seeing a build up of files in my TEMP folder, one for each change I make to a document and each taking up the same disk space as the original. It doesn't appear atm that these files get cleaned automatically though possibly they might if I leave it a day or two. If they do not get cleaned then this situation would soon become a significant problem. The temporary files are easily found using search or Everything.

Anyone else using OneDrive for backup and able to comment on this?

EDIT - I should have tried rebooting before posting that, as they have now disappeared, so OneDrive remains a possibility. All comments welcome.

 

I would still choose a second backup media, or are you?

I used Dropbox for the same thing, until one day a sync snafu happened and I lost 30GB of data. Luckily, I had it saved on an offline drive too.

 

Yeah, I've set it up so that my NAS is still automatically updated daily, and I'm using OneDrive as a second backup that automatically updates itself as file changes occur. I use WinRAR for the daily backup, set to incrementally backup new and changed files only, each backup having a unique filename. This has enabled me to keep daily backups for the last month and monthly backups going right back to 1995.

 

While getting my head around how OneDrive works, requiring you either to move or copy your files to the OneDrive folder if you want them to sync, I was wondering why MS hasn't simply given users the option to sync any folder by creating links to it, rather like how Libraries work.

 

Sounds like Carbonite or something like it would work better for you, or make symbolic links.

 

I've never understood about symbolic links, but after a quick read here they do seem to fit my needs perfectly. Thanks for the tip!

 

I'm having a problem with OneDrive sync that is preventing me from nailing it down as part of my backup regime. If I create a new data folder in OneDrive on my PC it immediately gets recognised and sync'd in OneDrive.com, just what I need. But if I later add more files to that folder, or delete or change any existing files, it takes forever for OneDrive.com to recognise the changes and sync them. I'm talking like hours or even next day. However if I make similar changes in OneDrive.com they are immediately sync'd, which is how it should be of course. Any other OneDrive users able to comment?

@Adrynaline - symlinks are working perfectly for this, great suggestion.

 

I've just been reading about sync problems with OneDrive in this thread. Think I'll forget about it until they do something about it, if ever