How can i delete files without deleting the cloud file?

I Have a Question
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Well, i know why i didn’t get an answer… my post vanished from last night…

I have had odrive a while but kept looking for ‘better’ alternatives… tried a bunch with mixed results… so decided to give Odrive a more complete test.

I am pretty sure this can be done but i can’t figure it out. Want to use my usual drives and sync to them so they’re copied to the cloud… no problem… but some files are old or archived and i want to delete them but keep the archived file on the could… files are synced and i delete the original the cloud copy is deleted. has to be a way to save the cloud version while deleting the original. !

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Hi @marty,
Odd that your post was deleted. I took a look and I didn’t see anything flagged, so I’m not sure what happened. Sorry about that.

For removing the local content but keeping it in the cloud, it sounds like converting the files to placeholders using unsync is what you are looking for. Take a look at this section of our usage guide for details and let me know if you have any questions. https://docs.odrive.com/docs/manage-disk-space#section-unsync-old-files

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i have figured out unsync but that requires me to unsync individual files. this then requires me to do multiple steps to maintain a copy in the cloud and make sure i’ve unsynced in advance or risk losing these files.

there could be 100-300 files i’d have to manually manage at a time. This is not really a valid solution since the possibility of errors is so high.

In a traditional back up routine, the files are saved regardless what one does locally… how can i manage files locally without having to worry what odrive does to these files… ? as odrive has been promising a standard backup routine for a year but hasn’t released it yet, it seems to me there is no safe way to delete a file locally when using odrive without risking what it’ll do to these files.

i did test this by creating a file, put it in documents, deleted it and it ended in the odrive trash. how do i delete files without going into the trash?? that would mean thousands of files could end up in trash you couldn’t delete for risk of deleting files you don’t want deleted.

the unsync old files would work, but it’s a hugely manual process this way. maybe instead of deleting, putting them in an unsynced folder? and cloud the folder but don’t sync it? then delete originals? would that be an acceptable work around?

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Hi @marty,
Thanks for the reply.

For unsync:

  • You can enable auto-unsync to remove any manual intervention. https://docs.odrive.com/docs/manage-disk-space#section-configure-auto-unsync
  • You can also unsync at the folder-level to collapse an entire structure with one click.
  • You can even multi-select files and unsync, if you want to search for them with Finder/Explorer and then highlight and right-click->unsync them.
  • It is also possible to script a custom unsync solution, if you are more adventurous. There is a blog post I published a while ago that delves into the CLI. Its a more advanced topic, but I have an example script in there that shows how to unsync based on date, size, and extension. It would be possible to use this for files over a specified size with a scheduled task running every so often.

Even if manually unsyncing, I would think having to manually delete the files would require the same, if not more, work.

I may be misunderstanding your use case, though. Is the goal to archive the data and then clear that space on the local disk, or is it more than that?

For backup, odrive only functions in a full, bi-directional sync capacity, which means it will sync deletes too. They are held in the odrive trash for safety, but that can’t really be used as a solution for your use case.

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i think the last comment is the accurate one. it may not be able to do what i want. I assume, even if i use a backup program like goodsync, if the files are stored in the same places and it’s synced with odrive, it’ll still delete the files i don’t want deleted.

you are partly correct though. …i do want to delete files i don’t need, but for legal/space reasons i need to keep them. contracts I likely will never look at again must be stored for 5-7 years. why use 100megs to store a batch of pdf contracts for that long on my hard drive? cloud is ideal…

there is one other solution i see… creating a directory called archive, sync the files in that dir, then unsync, but do not have it linked… then if i delete the originals, and they will survive as a .cloud file… ? is this correct logic? of course, the problem there is if i add more files to that dir, and sync, it’ll delete the long ago deleted files i suspect…

the last option is to screw it, don’t use odrive for these, create archive, upload them with goodsync, don’t tell odrive about these files at all, delete the originals, and be done with it…

maybe as an idea … adding an option to ‘ignore sync’ at file or folder level that will allow you do add/delete files but it ignores the sync rules. so you can delete originals, but since ignore sync is in effect it won’t delete files i delete.

either way, for now, i’ll create a set of folders i can manage with goodsync or arq and not attach them to odrive’s control.requires multiple products but until have your own backup option this is the best option… i assume, odrive will allow what i want to do natively, and will create true backup files that are not impacted by anything odrive’s synced files are doing. ?? On Amazon, where space is free, it’s not a big deal… might be on pay per gb sites, but for amazon, duplicated files is not as big a deal, although we won’t tell amazon… lol.

thanks\

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