Restoring files to Windows PC

Troubleshooting
1

Hi

I am trying to restore my o drive files to my windows pc.

So I synced them with the odrive client and they are in the blue folders.

When I try to move a folder with the blue icon to a local directory it puts them in the trash

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks and sorry for the noobish question

2

Hey @TommyMapp,
It sounds like you may want to copy the files instead of move them. When you move them, odrive will see that the items are missing from its “view” and consider them deleted. It will then want to sync those changes to the remote storage.

If you are forced to move instead of copy, because of local storage constraints, you can restore the items in the odrive trash after moving them (Restore all trashed items). Just make sure you do not empty the odrive trash (Empty trash and sync all deletes)!

3

Thanks. I wanted to move them so the date attributes did not change…
But I will try to copy.
I installed a newer client and then I tried “move odrive folder” and got a warning, so I tried to cancel but i now have another odrive icon though it does not seem to be doing anything.

is there an easy way to get my files back and outside of odrive?
I must be missing something conceptionally

4

I realize that they are not in odrive. but I want them out of odrive “control”

5

Hey @TommyMapp,
Moving the odrive folder will move the default folder to another location. It will reset the odrive folder to a fresh state, when it does this. That means you would need to download everything again. It doesn’t sounds like this is the solution you want, but I am still a bit unclear on your goal.

Is your intention to:

  • Download everything and then stop using/uninstall odrive?
  • Download everything and relocate the downloaded items to another area of your local drive, but still keep everything in the cloud and available to odrive?
  • Something else?
6

I think it is an amazing product but possibly over my head.
i got the email from amazon about them ending their drive support.
and I wanted to learn how to do stuff with o drive
so my goal now is to move a couple of folders back to my local hard drive and out of odrive “control”
thanks for your help, i have been reading the forum and you do an amazing job!

PS How can I revert/cancel/stop the moving of the odrive folder?

1 Like
7

Hi @TommyMapp,
I will probably need to see a diagnostic from your client to know what the current state is and what the next steps are.

It sounds like you would like to download some folders and have them located outside of the odrive folder. odrive is bidirectional sync app, so it is going to see any removal of data from its folder as a local delete that needs to be synced to the remote storage, like you saw previously.

I think copying may be the way to go. Windows will generally retain the original modification datetime on files when a copy operation is done. The creation datetime will change, but modification is typically the one you are going to be looking at, and the default datetime displayed in Explorer.

So the next steps would be:

  1. Figure out the current state of your odrive
  2. Determine what, if anything is needed to allow you to move forward
  3. Download the folders you want via odrive
  4. Copy those folders to another location, with the assumption that the modified datetimes will be retained.

Does this sound reasonable? This would get the folders you want to a location outside of odrive. odrive will still be “aware” of the original files that are in your Amazon cloud storage, and they will stay in Amazon because of the local copy vs move.

Keep in mind that odrive doesn’t store any of your data. Instead, it allows you to locally sync and interact with the data that resides in your remote cloud storage accounts, like Amazon.

8

This sounds very reasonable.
I think that I was able to stop the moving of the odrive folder by backing out after I got the message to be careful, but not positive on that.

current_odrive_status.txt (1.4 KB)

9

Hi @TommyMapp,
It looks like the odrive folder is currently set to be at C:/Users/T/Pictures/odrive. This is a non-standard location, so it appears that the move was done.

This isn’t a “problem”, but you will just need to keep some things in mind:

  1. If you want to interact with Amazon Drive, it will now be done from the new folder (C:/Users/T/Pictures/odrive)
  2. This new folder is freshly initialized, so nothing will be downloaded in it.
  3. Your old folder will have been kept as a backup. You should find this in the C:/Users/T folder as “odrive” or “odrive-backup…”

Next steps:

  1. To proceed now with your copy operation, go to the new folder (C:/Users/T/Pictures/odrive) and browse to the folder you want to download. Right-click on it, select “sync”, slide the slider all the way to the right for “Everything”, check the “Include subfolders” checkbox, and click the silver sync button. This will start a full sync of the folder
  2. Since Amazon Drive has been a little more temperamental than normal, it is possible that odrive will not be able to download everything in one go if it runs into too many errors. There is a comprehensive forum post that goes over a recommended way to ensure you have downloaded everything before trying to copy it to another location by being thorough and deliberate in your downloading. You may not need to worry about this, but I recommend following the steps anyway. How do I Move or Migrate files from one storage provider to another? - #2 by Tony
  3. Once the everything has successfully downloaded, you can copy it to the desired location and repeat the process on the next folder, if applicable.
10

I will proceed with your steps, thank you.
I actually followed that procedure last night and it took a while. but it worked after two or three tries.

  1. is it possible that I initially used backup during my trial period? it was some time ago.
  2. Would I be better served by upgrading odrive?
  3. Can I move the folder back to its original (conventional) location and then do the sync?
11

Hi @TommyMapp,

It may be possible, although it doesn’t really change anything for you. Backup will have uploaded items from your local system to the destination of your choice. Backups are done with normal remote folders, so you can access those via the default odrive folder, the same as any other folder.

Since it sounds like you are just trying to download your data, a Premium subscription isn’t needed for that use case.

You can go through the same move process and move it back to C:/Users/T
Make sure there isn’t already an “odrive” folder in that location. If there is, rename that folder, first, so you don’t hit any conflict behavior. When you move it, the new folder will now be C:/Users/T/odrive and the folder will be freshly initialized with nothing downloaded in it.

12

Apologies for the excessive hand holding I require…
It wont let me rename the original … it is “in use”
should I exit the odrive from the taskbar first?

PS it is shown as .odrive ( .dot odrive)

13

Hi @TommyMapp,
This may have been the cause of the error you saw when you previously tried to move the folder. My guess is that there is a file open inside of that folder that is locking it and preventing a rename. Make sure all of your open documents and applications, except odrive, are closed. Hopefully this will unlock the folder. If not, a reboot of the computer should do it and then you can rename.

14

Me again…
problems keep escalating…
I was able to rename the original

to>
OLDodrive
by exiting the odrive client
I then restarted the computer only to find a lets get started screen for odrive
I now have 3 files in there
odrive
OLDodrive
odrivebackup-2023-11-14-1335
as well as one in the C:/Users/T/Pictures/odrive
but the app starts with a “lets get started screen” from the client app
please advise

.JPG
.JPG737Ă—561 37.5 KB

there

15

Hi @TommyMapp,
What might be confusing things is the hidden .odrive folder that is the configuration data for odrive. I didn’t mention this because usually it is not visible in Explorer, but you must have viewing hidden items enabled.

My guess is that you renamed the .odrive folder instead of the odrive folder, which would reset the application.

In any case, its no problem. Here is what you should do, just to make sure we are starting clean:

  1. Exit the odrive application
  2. Delete the C:/Users/T/.odrive folder
  3. Rename the C:/Users/T/odrive folder, although my guess is that there isn’t anything in there
  4. Delete the C:/Users/T/Pictures/odrive folder, which should only have placeholders in it and no actual data
  5. You should be able to delete the C:/Users/T/.OLDodrive folder, also, as it should just contain old configuration data.
  6. Start odrive again.
  7. This will create a new C:/Users/T/.odrive folder for configuration data, and ask for login
  8. Login to odrive and the new C:/Users/T/odrive folder will have your links listed.
  9. Proceed normally.
16
  1. Exit the odrive application
    **there is no app in the system tray
  2. Delete the C:/Users/T/.odrive folder
    **it wont let me MAYBE I CAN EXIT WITH TASK MANAGER ?? dont know HOW though
  3. Rename the C:/Users/T/odrive folder, although my guess is that there isn’t anything in there
    **DONE :slight_smile: changed to OLD2odrive
  4. Delete the C:/Users/T/Pictures/odrive folder, which should only have placeholders in it and no actual data
    **DONE
  5. You should be able to delete the C:/Users/T/.OLDodrive folder, also, as it should just contain old configuration data. DONE It was alot
  6. Start odrive again.
    it does NOTHING
  7. This will create a new C:/Users/T/.odrive folder for configuration data, and ask for login
  8. Login to odrive and the new C:/Users/T/odrive folder will have your links listed.
  9. Proceed normally.
17

Hi @TommyMapp,
Okay, no problem. Let’s try a different approach:

  1. Uninstall odrive via normal add/remove programs
  2. Install again with the latest version: Set Up Your odrive

Since you’ve cleaned-up the other stuff, this should get you back into good shape and start you at step 7.

18

Capture
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can I Exit with this? HOW?

19

Hi @TommyMapp,
It is strange that you don’t see the odrive icon in the tray menu (not even under the ^ icon in the tray menu on the bottom right, next to the clock?) because the odrive.exe app is the tray icon.

In any case, uninstall will kill those processes and clean-up things if you can’t exit the app from the tray menu. Or, you can just kill them manually, if you want.

20

I will do the uninstall
is it possible for me to F this up and lose my files? :grimacing:
im a little scard :pleading_face: