The release of Microsoft Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 OS brought various new interesting features and functionalities out of which one important feature was Sky Drive (now known as One Drive). Microsoft was expecting a lot from this cloud sync feature but unfortunately some users didn’t like this One Drive or Sky Drive because of its automatic sharing or file syncing process between PC Data and One drive. Sky drive or One drive is closely integrated with Windows and is really useful for users who are fond of using online free cloud service for offline data storage and security but on the other hand there are users who have found this feature disappointing and as security threat in case of account hacks. Moreover it’s not quite easy to disable or uninstall sky drive completely from Windows for a beginner therefore here I have provided a simple brief step by step guide on how you can turn off one drive or sky drive sync in Windows 8.1 and i hope you find it useful.
How to Turn off One Drive OR Sky Drive sync Windows 8.1 – Different Ways
In order to disable or turnoff syncing your PC Data with Microsoft One drive or sky drive account you need to go through a series of steps that I have mentioned below so just follow them and turn off skydrive sync in Windows 8.1 OS.
- Go to your Windows Start Screen and Open the Charms menu by hovering the mouse to the top right corner of your Screen and Select Change PC Settings as shown below.
- Select One Drive from the list of options as shown below in the screen shot.
- Now Under One Drive tap on Sync Settings -> Here You can manually select which PC Settings, Files, Apps or data you want to be synced to One drive or Skydrive by individually enabling or disabling the syncing options.
- That’s it and you are all done. Now you can easily enable or disable syncing whenever you want to do.
Disable One Drive or Sky Drive Sync Completely : Steps to Follow
The above mentioned steps will help you to change sync settings for particular things like apps, start screen etc but if you want to completely disable one drive syncing like files or folders syncing then you need to make some changes in your Windows Group Policy editor.
Note – Group Policy Editor is available only for PRO Windows 8.1 OS
- Open RUN Command box and type gpedit.msc and Hit ENTER
- Go to Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\OneDrive or Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\SkyDrive
- In the right hand side you will see an option Prevent the usage of SkyDrive for File Storage Just Select it and do a right click on it and select edit.
- Now Check mark the option Enabled and click OK to save the setting and close out of Group Policy.
- That’s it now Sky Drive will no longer be able to sync with your PC Data
Another brilliant article from you,sir.This had been annoying me for the simple reason that something else was in charge of my PC which automatically backed-up all my data onto a cloud server.And now,……it can’t.
Thanks again.
P.S. Hope someday you’ll also write another piece on bridging
Tata Photon with MTNL so users can take advantage of increased bandwidth.
It’s really good to hear from you..Thanks for your appreciation…I will try to look for away to bridge Tata Photon with MTNL Soon 🙂