I ask because of this article as well as this other article.
I don’t use OneDrive because it seems to slow down windows 10 for me. I have an older Laptop that runs just fine but when MS kept bugging me to use onedrive my PC seemed to slow way down. So I disabled it.
I use Dropbox for file storage, no slow down.
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As you know, you can store your data in the cloud like Dropbox, Mega and OneDrive, etc. However there are other free solutions. If you have two or more computers in your house, you can store your backup on the other computer by opening a share between them.
There is software like Syncthing (free) which can copy your data to another computer aywhere in the world, or into space assuming you have internet there. That data can be encrypted too if you wish. Syncthing is free and works on multiple platforms. I have win7 and Win10 and my Android Cell sharing data. Some of the data between the windows systems is bi-directional menaing I have the same data on each system. The cellphone just sends photos to my Windows systems.
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Well, Lavarock, do you recommend that Windows 10 users use Windows Backup to sync their Windows settings to OneDrive just so they can get an extra year of free security updates? Does Clark Howard recommend OneDrive? I can’t say that stuff said about OneDrive in this Ask Leo! video doesn’t bother me. No offense, but I wish that Scott Mueller of Upgrading and Repairing PCs fame were still available for consultation.
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I have spent lots of time trying to delete Microsoft OneDrive because I did not like that every time I put a camera SD card in my computer, it had to read and download it. I’m still not sure if I was able to do that.
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Companys such as Microsoft want you to use their software and facilities, which was obvious with their Explorer lawsuit. Even Google got on the bandwagon offering free telephone service and (at the time) unlimited storage of photos and email. They used that data for their own purposes. Have you ever thought about those “choose the motorcycles” challenges on websites? If enough people choose the same squares contining morotcycles, people have now identified what most say a motorcycle looks like. Then the computers can look at other photos of items and decide what is a motorcycle.
So back to OneDrive. OneDrive is telling me that it will no longer run on my Windows 7 computers. Yes, even the forums here are ready to bid me goodbye for using old browsers.
I was able to search and find a hack to allow me to continue to get security updates and fixes for my Win7 boxaes and still get them today. This was offered to companys who could not upgrade from Win7. Did you know that video poker machines and other video devices in casinos run software like Windows server, XP and other versions? To force big companys to upgrade doesn’t work well, so behind the scenes, if an old system such as Win7 could bring down the Internet, Microsoft would be hard-pressed not to offer a patch. Win7 has over 2% of users but is still going strong.
There are other software solutions I have mentioned. These include free cloud storage like Mega.NZ which offers 20Gb of free storage and paid tiers above that. Also GoogleDrive and Dropbox with various free tiers. It just depends upon your needs.
I used to buy external drives from Costco every year or two. The latest drive usually cost about $100 to $130. I could just copy my system completely to the drive and have it elsewhere in the house. I then decided to rent cloud space for cheaper through Backblaze. For $99 a year I have unlimited storage. Note that I take advantage of that deal because I have approximately 5 TB od data stored, so yes, their unlimited is unlimited. Their system by default does not back up the operating system, but if you use a backup program to create a disk file backup, that file could be uploaded and saved.
As I mentioned before Syncthing could be used between other computers. One might have a family member on the East coast and one on the West coast. They could copy their files across the country and have a far away backup. Those files could be in an encrypted folder so your Brotherinlaw can’t see your financial data and hit you up for a loan.
If you need and want OneDrive, use it. I would also have alternate backups for any service that all of a sudden decides to change their terms and prices.
As I mentioned, many backup programs and system may not backup the operating system, which I think is a major flaw. On our HP Mainframes we had a system backup and a data backup. With those two backups you could recreate a system from scratch. On these PC computers Windows pretty much requires you to install a fresh copy of Windows and then restore your data. HOWEVER, the programs usually need to be all re-installed. I personally have hundreds of programs and mst of those Win7 install files no longer exist. So a complete disk backup is prefered to a file backup.
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Lava, I have to ask? Why are you still using Win7? I loved it when it was the current windows but now it’s 4 versions behind. What do you do to make sure it’s secure?
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I have perhaps 40 programs I use often for Win7 that Microsoft will not allow me to run on my system. The software was mostly Shareware and the companys are out of business. Newer software either is trialware with ads or paid software (some with ads, I’m thinking Norton). If it is not broken, why upgrade?
Also, why upgrade just because Microsoft wants the revenue. Microsoft forced the chip manufactorers to upgrade chips and those chips no longer allow older operating system. MS has some software to be able to run older programs however it is with premium version of Windows.
My old mainframes (which companys like State Farm used) speced as follows:
- Memory: The HP 3000 Series II supported up to 512 KB of memory. This was a significant increase from the original HP 3000, which had a maximum of 128 KB of memory.
- Concurrent Users: The HP 3000 Series II could effectively support up to 16 concurrent users/tasks using an asynchronous terminal controller that came standard with the system.
Yes, they did graphics, but compare those specs and number of users to Windows 11 if you want.
Win11: Minimum Memory: 4 GB and you would be hard pressed in some instances to have 1 user let alone 16 running concurrent processes.
Also note that the HP mainframes of today will still run the software I wrote and compiled back in the 70’s and 80’s with no changes. With Microsoft 10 I can’t run some programs I bought for XP just a couple of decades ago.
I also will run my Toyota Tundra until the wheels fall off (it only has 222,000 miles on it now), so why upgrade before I have to?
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OneDrive is a virus in my book. Microsoft desperately wants to mine your data to catch up with google. I don’t care what Microsoft says, they will slip something in to the Terms and Conditions that allow them to do this. The jury is still out on the other backup services. For me, I’d backup what I want to backup into a zip file, then encrypt it, and only then would I put it up on a cloud backup service.
I turn off onedrive after every single update, but MS has added it to all of their office products to nag you to death. Every update, it comes back on. Microsoft is also nagging about unifying your accounts with a Microsoft account to unify everything you do. Yeah, not for me.
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I’ve considered switching to Linux to avoid the constant MS upgrade game, but I’m not sure I want to learn a whole new OS at this point in life. For now, I continue to use MS and go through the settings to make it as private and secure as possible. I disable OneDrive.
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I hate OneDrive, and I tried to get rid of it before. As soon as I started copying my files, it was very stubborn, and I started having issues. I LOVE my Dropbox and would like to copy everything from OD to Dropbox. Any suggestions for me?
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Andrew I would urge you to give Linux a shot. Choose well and you will not have to learn much. For example, around 1999 windoze XP was getting launched and I had a colleague glance at my work station and asked how I liked XP! It was of course Linux and had a desktop theme that looked like XP. Of course it had virtual work spaces that micro$oft did not invent until a number of years later.
Anyway there are versions that you can install and instantly be able to use, For example Linux Mint. I use a Mint edition called Mate. If you ever decide to look, I suggest doing it on a “cast-off” computer that is “too slow” for windoze. There is plenty of help out there.
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I have played with unix also (can’t remember the version distributions) but I also used the management interface to adjust parameters. Although I have quite a background in tech support, I found that I enjoyed the user-friendly management over the command-line items which may have been the initials of the creators Grandmother 
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I’ll take your advice and load Linux Mint on an older laptop to check it out. My problem is that I don’t know anyone else who uses Linux, so if I get stymied with some tech issue, I have no one to call. I know there are online forums, but it helps to have a mate who is somewhat up on the technology.
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Be sure that if you wanna try Linux to install it alongside Microsoft so that if you have programs in Microsoft that will not run in Linux you do not lose them.
It is a pain to switch between Microsoft and Linux but that is necessary if you have programs like Quicken that will not run in lenox.
in my case I have years of data in Quicken.
There are versions of Linux which you can write to a USB drive, boot from that drive (may have to change your primary boot in bios) and run a version of Linux from that USB without doing anything to your current operating system or hard drive. I will leave the details to Linux people here as I have not doe the above in years and don’t know what is available.
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Really good comments here, so I will follow on, if Mod don’t censor me…
Raspy brings up the premier reason/excuse to not jump out of micro$oft squirrel cage. That is, if you rely on Quicken or any other product that does not directly run on Linux. I will table the “dual boot” suggestion for now.
Lavarock gives one of the most excellent ways to try Linux without much (or any) change to your computer. That is to boot removable media (like CD/DVD) or in this case USB. My favorite method is to use YUMI (Pendrive) tool to create a bootable USB, possibly with several systems on it.
With all that said, I will go thru some of the ways to get Linux, from least to most intrusive. My thinking is that a newbie should stay away from most intrusive! Been there, done that!
- Build and boot from removable media, leaving host computer unaltered.
- Build on a disposable computer/disk, giving it a second life.
- Build a virtual system to run on top of main system.
- Build a dual-boot system so you can switch operating systems.
The primary reason I don’t like dual boot is because of the possibility of destroying the system you are trying to turn into a dual boot even though success is very likely these days, The other reason is that the “other” system will likely languish and just take space. I’ve built a few and quit for that reason.
A virtual system is very cool but requires a resourceful computer with sufficient disk and memory. To me, building one is not hard but I would not recommend for a beginner. Once done, you would have a complete “other” system running at same time as main system and you can easily switch between them on the fly.
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