What is OneDrive?

Maybe you’ve seen the little cloud icon in your taskbar and wondered exactly what it meant.  It’s called OneDrive and it’s a product of Microsoft.  OneDrive is a an online file hosting service (cloud storage).  The application comes built into Windows 10, so it’s there whether you want it or not.

The  service is comparable to other cloud storage solutions like Dropbox and Google Drive.  Microsoft gives you 5GB of storage free, but if you want more space they’ll be glad to sell it to you.  You can backup your pictures and important files to OneDrive so you’ll have a copy if anything happens to your hard drive.  Install it on another computer and you can sync the same files between computers.  There are also mobile versions for Android and iOS devices to access your files on the go.

If you have a slower connection you may find that syncing files will slow down your web browsing even more.   I’ve seen some cases where OneDrive was the culprit in bringing internet connections to a standstill.  If you decide you’d rather not have the syncing service running on your computer, use these instructions to stop OneDrive.  If you are looking for a good backup solution give us a call, we’d be glad to help!