Migrating local content from a Windows system to abraunegg/onedrive on a new Linux system

[MincingWords]

My elderly aunt had basically stopped using her Acer laptop (Intel quad-core 1.6GHz; 4GiB RAM) running Windows because it was too slow to be practically usable (RAM railed up right after booting). I replaced the 500GB HDD with a 750GB I had on hand and mounted the 500GB in another machine so I had access to the content. I discovered by inspection that she had been using MS OneDrive. I have Arch Linux running on the laptop now and I've copied the contents of C:\Users<my_aunt>\OneDrive over to it; there are about 4.9GiB of content there and almost all of it is in ...\Pictures. I have abraunegg/onedrive installed on the laptop now but have not started it. My question is, is there a way I can integrate the MS OneDrive content I copied from the laptop's original HDD into the abraunegg/onedrive instance so that the whole 4.9GiB doesn't have to be downloaded from MS to recreate the local repository?

[abraunegg]

@MincingWords

My question is, is there a way I can integrate the MS OneDrive content I copied from the laptop's original HDD into the abraunegg/onedrive instance so that the whole 4.9GiB doesn't have to be downloaded from MS to recreate the local repository?

re-create the applicable folder structure under the users account in ~/OneDrive

my advice is use symbolic links potentially for the data in, for example ~/Pictures and make a symbolic link in ~/OneDrive so you end up with ~/OneDrive/Pictures

By default, the client will look at ~/OneDrive and traverse symbolic links in that location for the real data. When you set this up correctly, you will not be re-downloading the data.

To test everything, use onedrive -s -v --dry-run ... this is essentially a no-op (no download, no data movement) .. make sure the client is doing what is needed / required. Keep repeating the process until the client is doing what you want it to do.

Once complete, enable a systemd service so the client runs in the background and will automatically upload/download changes as required.

[MincingWords]

Thank you. I attempted the --dry-run invocation after moving the contents to ~/OneDrive and it seemed like it was trying to work but for the authentication part which I can't do until my aunt supplies the creds.

I have another question. The e.g. .JPG and .MOV files that are underneath ~/OneDrive don't seem to be valid media files when I attempt to open them with various viewers. The Linux "file" utility just says "data." Is this expected behavior? Does OneDrive compress or encrypt the files somehow?

[abraunegg]

I have another question. The e.g. .JPG and .MOV files that are underneath ~/OneDrive don't seem to be valid media files when I attempt to open them with various viewers.

As you have the windows disk still - hopefully still in a valid condition - boot back into Windows and validate that the files are actual files and not 'on-demand' partial data files.

It could also be that your images / movie files dont have the right Linux application installed to handle them at present.

Does OneDrive compress or encrypt the files somehow?

Windows / NTFS does use file compression, so depending on the actual configuration of the system - you never know. Microsoft OneDrive also implements 'on-demand' - meaning your files are not really kept locally, but are in a state that you have access to them if required.

It may just be simpler to 'authenticate' the 'onedrive' client and let it sync all the data to the laptop.