OneDrive Sync Update "On-Demand" - Got it?
The fun never ends with Office 365 file sync/storage changes. The latest change allows your files to be downloaded “On-Demand“ rather than actually storing a “hard copy” on the device, and at present we have the choice to enable/disable this feature.
The new features’ purpose is to give you more disk space, so you don’t have to keep a copy of every SharePoint or OneDrive file you have synced to your device, you can just browse the synced library and automatically download the file when you click to open it. As computers are moving towards faster SSD type storage, and most of us have fast (ish) internet, this sort of makes sense.
Personally, I feel this undoes the original good idea of Microsoft which allowed you to work on files on the move when you have no internet, then have them sync when you do. That was part of the original selling point of the system, and made a lot of sense for workers on the move. Okay, so we do still have a choice of keeping individual files that are important to us, but that’s just more to think about! I would argue we don’t need that level of management, and most of us will forget what is and isn’t on our device in a library of 1000’s of files.
How to turn on the space saving feature:
If you have low disk space but want to be able to browse your files on your PC, rather than through the web window you can now do so. To enable “On-Demand”, right click the OneDrive cloud icon in your system tray and go to your settings.
Tick the box under Files On-Demand. A few minutes later your libraries will be converted into the new format.
You will probably find that most of your files remain the same, and have the same green tick icon next to them until you right click to choose the new option. If they just have a new cloud icon then they are not actually downloaded to your device yet.
When you right click on a file you can either choose to free up disk space which will remove the file but keep it’s placeholder ready for you to download when needed. Or you can choose to always keep the file on the device in which case it will work just as it did before and will have a (new look) green tick next to the file.
Enjoy the new system!