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OneDrive
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Visit the bottom of this page to view the help guides referenced in this page
OneDrive is a part of Microsoft365 (formerly Office365), just like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. OneDrive is an internet-based service that can be accessed directly on your computer by installing the OneDrive App. OneDrive can also be accessed through a web browser if you are using someone else’s computer. OneDrive is compatible with Windows, macOS, Android and iOS. If you are using a Linux computer, like a Chromebook, you can access OneDrive through the browser as there is no official app for Linux. OneDrive is included in the university’s subscription to Microsoft and every university member has 5TB of cloud storage available to them.
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1TB (terabyte) is 1,000GB (gigabytes)*. 1GB is 1,000MB (megabytes)*.
For reference: a standard 4-page Word document, without any pictures, is less than .05MB, and you have 5,000,000MB available.
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This page is a plain language explanation of OneDrive. If you are confused about OneDrive, or how to use it, please give this page a read!
Visit the bottom of this page to view the help guides referenced in this page.
UConn’s data storage background
Faculty, staff, and students who were at UConn pre-prior to 2023 are likely familiar with the P Drive and the Q Drive. These drives are different than OneDrive because they existed on campus. In the UConn datacenters, there were specialized computers, full of hard drives, that acted as personal and shared storage. These specialized computers acted as network-file-shares, or “NFS”. Whenever a user signed into a university computer on campus, that computer would reach out and connect to your NFS so your files were always available to you. This allowed users to begin their work on one computer, and then continue their work on another.
However due to the nature of these computers and the ecosystem they lived in, they could not feasibly adapt to the changing workplace. These NFS were physically on campus, and you needed to be on campus in order to access them. Or, users could use a VPN (virtual private network) to have their computer behave as if it were on campus. In the case of the P Drive, users could not share files with each other, they could only transfer files or make copies of the file to send to one another. If you needed to share a document from your P Drive, you could have either sent it to your coworker and have them send it back when they were done, or you could have copied the file and sent the copy to them. However, this copy would be totally independent from the original file.
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OneDrive is a part of our university Microsoft accounts, which means your user-presence is tightly integrated with your UConn account that you use every day. Sharing files with another university member is as easy as knowing their name. As explained in the help guides on this website, sharing is as simple as: right-click, type in your colleague’s name, and click then Share. If sharing with a university member, their name will appear in OneDrive share fields. However, if you’re sharing with someone outside of the university, you simply need to know their email address.
How much storage space do I have?
Every user has 5TB of available storage. But how much space is this really?
1TB (terabyte) is 1,000GB (gigabytes)* and 1GB is 1,000MB (megabytes)*.
For reference: a standard 4-page Word document, without any pictures, is less than .05MB, and you have 5,000,000MB available.
*Depending on the computer system, the values above are expressed as either 1,000 or 1,024. This does not affect your usage of OneDrive or your computer.
Is my data safe?
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.
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As mentioned above, OneDrive is an internet-based system. However, following completing the “sync” process will allow you to access your files without using a web browser. By following the "sync" help guide listed at the bottom of this page, you can have your files appear in File Explorer (Windows) and Finder (macOS). If you’re unsure of what these are: when you’re in any program editing a file and then click “Save As”, a File Explorer (Windows) or Finder (macOS) window will appear and let you navigate your folders to find the location in which you would like to save your file. Your OneDrive files will appear in the File Explorer and Finder windows just as your other files do. To see what this looks like, be sure to visit the guides below!
A “sync” happens when you install and set up the OneDrive App. If you are given a computer that already has the OneDrive App installed, the “sync” happens when you sign into the App.
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OneDrive has a feature named Files On-Demand that automatically handles the transition of files from local to online-only to local, and vice versa. With On-Demand enabled, only the files that you are working on will consume space on your storage drive. This feature is enabled by default when you first install OneDrive.
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 from OneDrive 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.
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With OneDrive, all users have access to a Recycle Bin. Uses Users of the legacy P Drive will know that this was absent in that system; those uses users 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
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Related Help Guides
OneDrive - help homepage: OneDrive
Sharing files - homepage: Share Files/Folders in OneDrive
Install and “sync”: Set Up OneDrive on a Computer
https://uconn.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/IKB/pages/26228721112/OneDrive+On-Demand
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