> saved it on OneDrive which now defaults to storing online only

This is why local backups should always have the highest priority.

Storing online can be useful, but people should never forget that local backups are the best.

Fully agree.

The problem is that on a fresh system with a free MS account, OneDrive shows up as the first choice as “$User - Personal files”. No notice that this actually only stores it online and offers only a fraction of the 1TB local drive.

Truly deceptive and my mistake for not noticing when I helped to set up that laptop.

Don't feel bad. Even if you noticed, It is likely that during the next "security" update, one drive would be re-enabled, as the default - and possibly everything moved there.

[dead]

lol wtf