Correct way to move to a new computer

[isaacbh2]

I have an up-to-date backup of my onedrive files. Can I just copy the files back to the onedrive folder on the new computer before running the program? I want to avoid redownloading gigabytes of files that I already have locally. Or would onedrive download everything again on first sync on the new pc?

[abraunegg]

@isaacbh2

Can I just copy the files back to the onedrive folder on the new computer before running the program?

You can just copy the files to your new PC and they should not be downloaded again.

Ensure that you also copy your application configuration from ~/.config/onedrive (usual default) as well to ensure you retain your application configuration and cache database.

If you have modified / edited your 'config' file, ensure that the 'sync_dir' path matches your new location. Validate that all the options are correctly set for your new PC.

When copying the files to the new PC, please ensure that you do so in a manner that ensures file integrity and retains the original timestamps. To do this, on the new PC:

rsync -avz --progress -e ssh user@source_host:/path/to/source/ /path/to/destination/

• -a – archive mode (retains timestamps, permissions, symlinks, etc.)
• -v – verbose (optional, for logging progress)
• -z – compress data during transfer
• --progress – show file transfer progress
• -e ssh – use SSH as the transport
• user@source_host:/path/to/source/ – path on the source machine
• /path/to/destination/ – local destination directory

To validate the integrity:

1. Generate checksums on the source:

find /path/to/source -type f -exec sha256sum "{}" + > source_checksums.txt

2. Transfer the checksum file to from the source system to the new pc:

scp user@source_host:/path/to/source/source_checksums.txt .

3. Verify on the destination:

cd /path/to/destination
sha256sum -c source_checksums.txt

Or would onedrive download everything again on first sync on the new pc?

If you do not copy everything over, this is exactly what will happen.

Before running the application on the new PC, please run the application in --dry-run mode to ensure that you have configured everything correctly, and that the client will operate as per your expectation.

[isaacbh2]

Thanks for the detailed answer! The transfer went smoothly.