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OneDrive offers an encrypted file storage solution. Your files are encrypted during travel (downloading / uploading) and while at rest (you’re not interacting with it). But what does it mean to be encrypted?
You can compare an encrypted file to a secret message you are sending to a friend. Beforehand, you both decided on a cypher that you will use to unscramble your secret messages. Now, you when you are finished writing your secret message to your friend, you scramble all the words using the cypher. Then you send the letter to your friend. When they receive the letter, they use that same cypher to decrypt the message. If anyone were to intercept the letter, they would have no idea what it says.
Depending on whether the file is at rest or in transit, it is encrypted with a 256 and a 2048-bit encryption key respectively. This means, while your data is in transit, there are 2^2048 possible combinations to decrypt your data.
How do I access my data?
ITS recommends that you “sync” OneDrive with your computer. Doing so will allow your OneDrive files to appear in File Explorer (Windows) and Finder (macOS) as if they were on your computer like any other, non-backed up file. Keep reading the next section to learn more! And remember, “sync”, all of these the other terms and situations are fully explained in the help guides on this website. If you feel lost at any point while reading this guide, there’s a help guide that will get you back on course.
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A real-world scenario: I have tons and tons of files on OneDrive. I log into my laptop and open the OneDrive folder and. I see every folder that I own in front of me. I dig into a couple folders to find the Word document I want and double-click on it. The file automatically downloads and then opens in Word. This file is now local, it can be edited and then saved once more, and it is consuming space on my storage drive. When I click on Save, my changes are automatically sent to OneDrive. I then close Word. If I do not touch that document again within 30 days, it will remove itself from my computer and return to online-only. It is no longer consuming space on my storage drive. If I need to edit the file again, I double-click on it, and once again it downloads to my computer. If I edit the document again 10 days later, the 30-day timer resets.
This is how “Files On-Demand" works. The files appear as if they are on your computer until allowing you to double-click them. Once double-clicked, they download to your computer so you can edit them. Once the file goes 30 days without interaction, it silently removes itself from your computer and returns to an online-only state and frees up the space on your storage drive that it was using.
Recycle Bin
With OneDrive, all users have access to a Recycle Bin. Uses of the legacy P Drive will know that this was absent in that system; those uses needed to reach out to ITS to receive help in restoring their files.
When you delete a file in OneDrive, it will sit in a user-accessible recycle bin for 93 days. If a file is manually deleted from the Recycle Bin, it is sent to a “second-stage recycle bin” where it will sit for another 93 days.
Maybe talk about syncing? time to go home
Guides referenced on this page
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