Small HD and OneNote, Google Drive, etc.

[edalsie]

I'm wondering how others solve the problem with the Surface (Surface Pro 3, 256GB HD) interacting with programs such as Google Drive, One Drive, Dropbox, etc. I find I can't really 'load them up' because there is a 'shadow' of each drive taking up valuable disk space on my internal HD.

Has anyone done a study (or know of one) that compares the HD impact of each? For instance, for the same amount of information stored on One Drive and Google Drive, does one use less space on the HD?

I have 1TB of space on One Drive, but I can't begin to use it because my HD fills up.
I admit I haven't embraced the concept of not fully syncing the web OneDrive with the HD OneDrive... which, if I understand correctly, would have all my information online, just not synced with my computer. For some reason it makes me uncomfortable.

I'd be interested in how others have fared.

Allen

 

[convergent]

You are correct that "syncing" to a cloud drive of any sort replicates what is on the cloud drive to your local disk. I don't think you'll find any more or less taken up by different cloud vendors because a file is a file. It matters not where it came from.

Microsoft in the Fall Creators update is supposed to be adding the "place holder" capability into OneNote which will allow it to conserve space on your local drive by only keeping the most frequently used files there, and keeping the rest in the cloud. They will all appear to be local and if you try to access one that is not, there would be a slight delay for it to retrieve. While this doesn't provide "backup" of your local files, it does allow you to tap into cloud repositories without filling your drive.

 

[edalsie]

Backups are no problem.
Thank you for confirming what I seemed to be observing