From my research with Microsoft Tech support forums, I understand that things changed for OneDrive with the coming of Monterey OS.
In previous Mac OS versions, the user could select where to put their local OneDrive folder and could choose to have all the files always stored in the local OneDrive folder on the Mac, as well as synced up to the OD cloud.
With Monteray OS, I can still choose the option to keep all of my files stored physically on my Mac, as well as synced to the cloud - but now the local OD folder location containing the actual data files is in the mandatory location of
USER>LIBRARY>CLOUDSTORAGE>ONEDRIVE-PERSONAL
The user can no longer select an alternative location for the actual OD folder - it has to be hidden in the Library. And the OneDrive shown in Finder in the expected location of
USER>ONEDRIVE
is in fact only an alias pointing to the mandatory location hidden in the library
I understand all this. However I do not understand why my backup software cannot still backup the actual files that all reside on my iMac in
USER>LIBRARY>CLOUDSTORAGE>ONEDRIVE-PERSONAL
I can understand that had I chosen the option to optimise storage, and have my files offloaded to the cloud and only downloaded to my Mac when I want to access that file, then my backup software might have problems to backup up files that are not actually residing on the Mac. But I have not chosen that option in OD. I have chosen the option to force OD to alway keep full copies of my OD files in the OD folder on my Mac. They physically reside on my Mac all the time. Why can’t my backup software back these up any more?
I keep all my data in OneDrive. I don’t think it is safe to rely on OneDrive sync to the cloud as a good backup regime. I prefer to also have a set of physical local backups of my data stored on external drives attached to my Mac. How can I do this going forward?
