Odrive for dummies?

I Have a Question
1

Hi, Is there a tutorial available anywhere that explains how odrive works in simple terms? It seems great but as non expert I am struggling to get my head round it, its a bit like being asked to fly a plane for the first time, mid flight! Thanks, Martin.

2

Hi @mh12,
This video is a little older, but it provides a nice walkthrough of the basic functionality of odrive. It is geared toward Amazon Drive, but the functionality displayed pertains to all of your linked storage:

This section of our usage guide goes through the basics of sync: https://docs.odrive.com/docs/sync-your-odrive

For the most part, once you have linked your storage to odrive, you really just need to interact with the files like you normally would interact with your regular files and folders. The major difference is that odrive uses placeholder files to represent your cloud data, at first.

Double-clicking on a placeholder file will either download and open the file selected, or “expand” the cloud folder so that you can browse further into the structure.

Any files you add to a linked odrive folder will automatically upload to the remote storage.

3

Thanks that is helpful, Files on my desktop are backed up automatically in the cloud on Amazon drive. If I download one of these files on my laptop through odrive and alter it then it is instantly altered on Amazon drive. The original file will not be altered back on my desktop, but the version in my odrive folder on my desktop will be altered. So I should delete the original files on my desktop which are now redundant?

4

Hi @mh12,
If you were to download and edit a file via odrive, odrive would see that change and immediately try to upload it back to Amazon Drive.

I can’t confidently comment on what a non-odrive software application will do once a change is made to the the Amazon Drive files. I would suggest testing it out with some sample data to see how the entire data flow works under your current configuration.

What client are you using for backup?

5

Hi, I am not explaining well. My important files are in my desktop hard drive and are backed up by amazon cloud. Now I have olink I might as well delete the originals on the hard drive because olink works with the copies in amazon cloud, does that make sense?

6

Hi @mh12,
That is correct. odrive will give you access to the files in your linked storage. Once your files have been uploaded to Amazon Drive (it sounds like they have), you can use odrive to download them when you need them, edit them, and, once you do not need immediate access to them, unsync them to save space.

Here is more on “unsync”: https://docs.odrive.com/docs/manage-disk-space#section-unsync-old-files

7

OK, so if I unsync a file it is deleted from my hard drive right?
Regarding backups, at the moment I back up the files on my hard drive to an external hard drive, is it advisable to backup my files on Amazon Drive in some way?

8

Hi @mh12,
If you unsync a file, the local content is removed and the file is replaced with a placeholder file. A placeholder file is a representation of the file you have in the cloud. It doesn’t have any data in it (0 bytes) but allows you to see what you have available in your linked storage.

For backup, many folks will use odrive as a form of backup (or protection), although it is not a traditional backup solution.

There is a post I wrote a while ago that goes into sync vs backup and how I use odrive for my own needs. It may be of interest to you: