OneDrive on external drive on Mac

Question

OneDrive on external drive on Mac

Mark C 0

For years I was an Office 365 user and used OneDrive on my PC. I had all my data held locally on my D: drive and then synchronised into the cloud.

I've switched to Mac not long ago and set up my Mac with an external drive anticipating having all my data on there, as before. But Apple anticipate your data living in the cloud, not on the machine, so when I told OneDrive to keep all my data locally my internal drive filled up.

I found out that you can actually tell OneDrive where to cache the data and it hides it and I put it on my external. All was working. This has taken a few rounds of 'disconnecting' and/or re-setting my OneDrive and then downloading a LOT of data over my fairly slow internet link. So many rounds that I've abandoned using it for nearly all of my data. But having a set of files accessible on all my devices had some utility so I persisted and spent quite some time getting it working.

As of yesterday evening all was working fine. However some update has happened overnight to the OneDrive mechanism and now Finder shows TWO entries for OneDrive and if I look at my account via the Mac app the settings show a folder as a "disconnected location" - "This location is no longer connected to an account". I can either remove it or leave it! No option to fix it. The folder it shows I can go to and that's the one I was working on happily yesterday evening. I tried deleting a file to see which of the two OneDrives 'responded' and synchronised to the cloud and... it's the one with no local data files. They look identical apart from one has the cloud with downward arrow icons and says I was working on it yesterday 17:18. The other correctly shows which dates I was working on the files, shows them all as being local - but still has the file that I deleted.

One update. Fully broken my setup.

I am SO fed up with this that I am now about to abandon OneDrive and switch to iCloud. I know that only works on the internal drive. I know it expects files in the cloud. But I won't have to fight the thing at every turn.

Microsoft, I've been with you for, goodness, 40 years now. Time to go.

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2 answers

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Answer 1

The current supported behavior on Mac is that OneDrive can use an external drive, and when the sync path is on that external drive, the cache path is placed there as well. External drives are supported, but on macOS the File Provider platform is involved, and Finder entries can change during upgrades or reconfiguration.

For the current state:

Verify which OneDrive folder is the active sync root.
- The active one is the folder where changes sync to the cloud.
- Based on the described test, the active sync root is the Finder entry that reflected the deletion in the cloud, even if it currently shows cloud/download icons.
- The folder shown in OneDrive settings as a disconnected location is no longer connected to the account.
Do not delete the disconnected folder until its contents are checked.
- Compare the disconnected folder with the active OneDrive folder and with OneDrive on the web.
- If the disconnected folder contains files that exist only there, copy those files to a temporary safe location first.
- If everything in that disconnected folder already exists in the active OneDrive location or online, it can be removed.
Re-link OneDrive cleanly if the setup is now inconsistent.
- Select the OneDrive cloud icon in the menu bar.
- Select Help & Settings > Preferences.
- Go to the Account tab.
- Select Unlink this Mac.
- If sign-in credentials appear to be stuck, open Keychain Access, search for OneDrive, and delete OneDrive Cached Credential.
- Sign in again.
- When prompted that a folder already exists, select Use this folder if it is the correct active OneDrive folder, or select Choose new folder to move OneDrive to the intended location.
If the goal is to keep the OneDrive data on the external drive, set that location again during setup.
- OneDrive supports external drives on Mac.
- The external drive should be formatted as APFS.
- Folder Protection cannot be set up with OneDrive on external memory.
If Finder is slow or files appear incomplete after re-linking, allow File Provider to recreate placeholders.
- On first open, macOS may create OneDrive-managed files on demand.
- To force creation of files and folders without downloading content, open Terminal and run: ls -alR ~/OneDrive or use the path to the actual OneDrive folder.
If full offline access is needed again after recovery:
- Select the OneDrive icon in the menu bar.
- Select OneDrive Preferences > Preferences.
- Select Download all OneDrive files now.

What this means for the duplicate Finder entries:

A second OneDrive entry that no longer syncs is consistent with a leftover or disconnected location after reinstall, reset, or File Provider changes.
The disconnected location is not the active account location anymore.
The safe path is: identify the active sync root, preserve any unique files from the disconnected folder, then remove the disconnected location or re-link OneDrive to the intended external-drive folder.

References:

Answer 2

This morning a new “search using AI” tool appeared as there has been an update. Sync root was on my external and I know which hidden file the cache was in as I was also backing it up. Unlinking/relinking causes all of my data to be re-downloaded (I’ve done this a few times now). The sync root has been updated during the installation of the update. Presumably whoever tested the update didn’t test it for use with external drives. I and up with two “locations” in finder. One that I have local copies of files, one that I don’t.

I’m not about to attempt to fix it all. Again. I’ve given up and will use iCloud. One failure too many. I’ve spent way too much time trying to get what should have been a simple setup configured and working only for it to be blown away by another update. I’m really quite annoyed and upset that a tool that I’ve used for many years is now so poor. I’m done.