- As you learn how to store files in file explorer,
there is one detail everybody should be aware of,
related to OneDrive
even if you don't remember setting up OneDrive.
OneDrive is an online storage tool offered by Microsoft.
You can store files on OneDrive
and those files are automatically synchronized
to a Microsoft server.
I encourage you to check out this course,
learning OneDrive for more information.
But the detail I want to talk about here is this,
OneDrive might be set up and working for you automatically,
and it's possible that you don't know it.
And if you use OneDrive,
it will affect how some important folders
are organized within your home folder.
With that in mind, I want to go to my home folder,
so I will open up file explorer.
On the left I want to go to this PC.
I'll open my main system drive by double clicking
on the C drive here.
I want to open the users folder,
and then my home folder,
which is the folder with my name on it.
And of course all of your personal files
should be stored somewhere in your home folder.
And there are pre-made folders for that.
I see my music folder here, and my videos folder.
If you do not use OneDrive,
you will also see your documents, pictures,
and desktop folders here.
Now I do see a folder here called documents,
but it's not what my computer considers
to be my main documents folder.
And I do not see the pictures or desktop folders at all.
Now since I do have OneDrive set up,
I see another folder here specifically for OneDrive.
And if I open that up,
this is where I find my actual real desktop documents
and pictures folders.
Now generally this is no big deal,
just an extra level of folder organization,
but there is more to this,
and I want to look at some settings.
We'll start by going to the taskbar in the bottom right,
and you might see an icon here for OneDrive
if you have OneDrive setup,
or you might need to click this upward pointing arrow,
and you'll see the OneDrive icon here.
Of course you'll only see it if you have OneDrive set up.
But I want to click on that,
in this OneDrive panel I want to go to help and settings.
Then in this menu I'll go to settings.
I want to move this window so we can still see file explorer.
Then I'll go to the backup tab,
and I'll click manage backup.
And this is your key right here.
If one or more of these three folders
are set up to be backed up to OneDrive,
then the main versions of those folders
will be inside of that OneDrive folder.
Now they say these folders are backed up
because everything you put in those folders
will also automatically synchronize to OneDrive,
essentially creating an instant backup.
If for any reason you do not want these folders
to be backed up, you can click stop backup,
and you can do that individually on any of these three.
Or, if these folders are not being backed up
and you want them to be, you can enable that here.
If those folders are being backed up,
they will be located inside of the OneDrive folder
that we saw,
and if they're not being backed up,
they'll just be in the normal home folder.
So the big reason why you might
want to have those folders backed up,
anything you store in the backed up folders,
will be synchronized to OneDrive.
So it's an automatic backup copy.
But there are a few reasons why you might not
want those folders to sync to OneDrive.
Maybe you prefer to manage your own backup
and you don't want a copy of your personal files
on Microsoft servers.
And another big factor,
there is a limit to how much you can store on OneDrive.
And if you hit that limit,
it can become confusing or costly or both.
If you reach the limit of your storage base on OneDrive,
you'll either need to pay for additional storage.
You could continue working
but some of your files will not be backed up,
or you can come here and disable that backup,
which would move those folders back to the home folder
as I said before.
Some people prefer to avoid that confusion
by coming here and turning this off upfront.
But, backups are important.
In another video in this course
we'll talk about other options for backup systems.
For now I'm going to leave the backup turned on,
and I'm going to close this panel,
but still here in OneDrive settings,
I want to go to the account tab,
and here you can check how much storage space
you have available in OneDrive.
If you have a free account,
you get five gigabytes of storage for free,
which really isn't that much.
But you will see an option here that will either say
manage storage or get more storage,
and you can click on that to see the options
where you can pay to upgrade your account
to get more storage space.
So on one hand, that explains why your documents,
desktop and pictures folders
might be in a different location,
but I hope you also understand the trade-offs and costs
of using a OneDrive backup,
and how you can disable it if you need to.