BoDEAN Posted December 7, 2013 Share Posted December 7, 2013 First time user, having a few questions on how to setup skydrive. I have always used Drop Box in the past, but with windows 8.1 and my xbox one, I want to start using Skydrive. Few questions. How do most people set it up? Do you use your default My Documents folder for skydrive? Or do you create a separate folder just for skydrive stuff? What kind of things do you have in your skydrive folder? I would imagine many people would stick with just documents and pictures. Any other input or insight would be appreciated, as I said, never really used it before. Thanks in advance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LambdaLambdaLambdaFn Posted December 7, 2013 Share Posted December 7, 2013 You can use the Modern UI app or the desktop 'library' (for lack of a better word). In my case, my phone automatically uploads the pics the Pictures. I have a few shared folders with specific people that I put stuff into, and other than that keep it pretty simple. I use it as my default drive in Windows 8 apps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member Posted December 8, 2013 Member Share Posted December 8, 2013 Nothing in my skydrive folder. I moved everything out after Windows 8.1 because it had a number of show stopping issues. Skydrive in 8.1 introduced this idea of online-only files by default. What this means is that normally things aren't downloaded until you access them. In practice, it should be essentially transparent to the end user, but it isn't. Originally my SkyDrive was setup with portable programs and scripts which I would run whenever I needed. After 8.1, this went out the window. It wasn't able to download the required files when I would run an executable -- for example, it would fail to download library dependencies or configuration files. Moreover, it would fail to download anything scripts accessed also. So, it became essentially useless. I planned to work around the issue by telling it to make everything available offline, but that didn't actually work. As far as I could surmise, it choked somehow and would just lie to me about what was actually available offline (i.e. tell me everything was). The only reliable way I got it to download everything was to initiate a copy of files OUT of the the skydrive directory. It'd happily download everything on the fly then. The final straw that made it entirely useless was simply the fact that I could no longer tell what had synced/how long was left for syncing/etc because presumably MS decided that information was too difficult for consumers to understand and removed it in 8.1. Problem is, that information is critically important if you are syncing more than just a picture here and there. I can't particularly rely on software that is unable to give tell me the status of my files. At that point, I might as well use something that can. The point is that I'd be wary of skydrive since 8.1. EDIT: I forgot to mention that it also wouldn't reliably delete everything after I moved my files out of it. It took me 2 or so days of repeatedly deleting files for them to stop coming back. It was as if I would delete them on one device and the other device would resync them stupidly. FiB3R 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tuckeratlarge Posted December 8, 2013 Share Posted December 8, 2013 8.1 Skydrive sucks donkey balls on my PC. It takes way too long to sync anything, sometimes taking hours before anything happens regardless of use of the File Explorer or Metro version. I used to use the desktop version on Windows 7 and 8 and that synced pretty much immediately. Which is what I want. I have to use the web interface if I want an instant transfer, negating the need for the File Explorer integration. I also don't like the fact that I have to sign in as a Microsoft account instead of local to get the Skydrive app to work (badly) and the App store. I am thinking of downgrading to 8 to get the lost functionality back, but I like the start button. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Anarkii Subscriber² Posted December 8, 2013 Subscriber² Share Posted December 8, 2013 Skydrive Pro with Office 13 works fine, much like Dropbox. It saves documents to your user profile, in a directory/drive you set. Not sure how much is actually saved there, but its a decent amount. Works the same as dropbox. I prefer Dropbox for the easy sharing though. Skydrive is more a online drive for backup of important data. (like photos of family and friends). Wouldnt keep anything too important there though. How to set it up, just do default settings. Put pics or whatever in it, and ure good to go. There is no hassle what so ever in setup, but id use it from the desktop and not the horrible metro tile. That thing is utterly useless. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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