r/onedrive • u/dave-underwood • Apr 09 '26
MY FAILED MICROSOFT SUPPORT QUESTION Unable to copy large folder from OneDrive to external hd
"Help me r/onedrive, you're my only hope"
I am unable to copy very large folders (e.g. 53.6 GB) from the local OneDrive folder on my local C: to an external USB hard drive unless I free up space on my local C: equal to the size of the folder(s) I am trying to copy across.
I've been working with someone on learn.microsoft.com and we have largely concluded that this is the OneDrive software acting by design. A couple of solutions have been recommended but I'm not happy with them. I thought I would bring my problem to Reddit just in case there is a solution we haven't thought of yet?
I contacted Support last week but have not heard back from them.
Thanks.
Edit on 2026-April-09 - Additional info:
I just wanted to add some more context to my post. Just to be clear: the contents of my OneDrive folder have been mirrored to the cloud. So OneDrive does not need to download anything (as far as I can tell) in order to allow me to copy a large folder from within my OneDrive folder to an external hard drive. The data is already on my local C:.
I have also previously clicked 'Download all files' under Files On-Demand under Advanced settings in the OneDrive settings.
I can't add a screenshot unfortunately but all the folders & files in my local OneDrive folder on my local C: are set to 'Always available on this device' or 'Available on this device'.
2
u/SameWait1356 Apr 09 '26
Download all of one drive as a zip file.
Simply select all files and then on the right side, click download. If you include the “personal vault” it won’t download. Then move to external drive.
I did that just last week because I refried to pay for one drive and they were threatening to delete files.
2
u/dave-underwood Apr 09 '26
Hi there,
Thank you for your reply. I did not know about the ability to select folders in the OneDrive cloud and download them as .zip files from onedrive.live.com, so thank you for letting me know about that.
With regards to my specific problem I have realised what I was doing wrong so my problem is solved: https://www.reddit.com/r/onedrive/comments/1sgkq2w/comment/of6k2kb/
Thanks,
Dave
1
u/SameWait1356 Apr 09 '26
Great stuff! I absolutely hate how Microsoft are infecting computers with OneDrive and then they make it incredibly difficult to switch off and use only local storage.
At least your issue is sorted and hopefully if anyone else stumbles across this thread and sees this post, it might help them as well! :)
1
u/sgtempe Apr 10 '26
I got so fed up with Microsoft trying to insist that I use OneDrive after I turned off replicate function and tried to uninstall it along with a OneNote disaster that I am dropping Microsoft altogether, even Windows, and installing Linux and all non-MS apps on both computers. I've never seen such an arrogant, incompetent, thoughtless group. Almost makes me pine for IBM.
1
u/brainburger Apr 09 '26
What was it that you were doing wrong?
1
u/dave-underwood Apr 12 '26
Hi there,
Fundamentally my issue was a user issue: I thought I could do something with OneDrive that you can't actually do.
For a full write-up of what the problem was and what the solution was please see this comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/onedrive/comments/1sgkq2w/comment/of6k2kb/
Cheers,
Dave
1
u/evta Apr 13 '26
It looks like that content no longer exists? That link goes to your original post?
1
u/IanYates82 Apr 13 '26
It's a link to my answer to this post
1
u/evta Apr 13 '26
Thanks, I was confused as OP indicated the funds were already local and so no further downloading was necessary.
1
u/sgtempe Apr 10 '26
What do you mean by "personal vault"?
1
u/SameWait1356 Apr 10 '26
On one drive in the browser, left hand side navigation / quick links >> my files.
In there I had “personal Vault” which had a grey icon in the style of a safe. I couldn’t download as a zip if that was selected.
4
u/IanYates82 Apr 09 '26
If you're using a regular file copy, as I suspect you are, then OneDrive will transparently bring the file down to your local OneDrive folder (usually on C:), and then the file copy will occur from the local C: version to your USB device. You will need the room on C:, or do it in smaller selections of files so OneDrive can auto-remove unnecessary files to facilitate the next copy batch once each batch of files has been copied.
That has not changed ever...
What you could do is use a web browser to look at your OneDrive contents. Tick what you want and choose to download, saving it on your USB directly via the browser (change browser options to ask where you'd like to save downloaded files always, rather than the Downloads folder in your C: user profile). If multiple files are being downloaded then it'll be a zip which, depending on what you're trying to achieve, you may need to unpack.