Setting Up OneDrive

Estimated time: 25 minutes

Overview

Questions

• How do I set up rclone to use OneDrive with my Pomona account?
• What’s the difference between OneDrive Personal and OneDrive for Business?
• How do I select the correct drive when multiple options are available?

Objectives

• Configure rclone for OneDrive using OAuth
• Understand OneDrive Personal vs OneDrive for Business options
• Verify connectivity and list your drive contents

When to Choose OneDrive

---

Callout

What the OneDrive authorisation currently returns on the Pomona tenant.

Deciding Between Box and OneDrive

Use OneDrive with rclone if you:

• Want personal control over cloud storage
• Prefer seamless Office 365 integration
• Have smaller-scale data syncing needs
• Want storage that’s accessible from multiple devices
• Don’t need to share with other Pomona users (use Box for that)

Aspect	Box	OneDrive
Intended use	Institutional/Shared	Personal/Individual
Best for	Collaboration at Pomona	Personal backups
Sharing	Easy with Pomona users	Better with personal contacts
Data governance	Pomona manages/audits	You manage
Setup complexity	Straightforward	Slightly more options

This episode assumes you already have an SSH session open with port forwarding and rclone loaded. If not, see Episode 2.

Configure OneDrive

---

Start a new rclone configuration:

BASH

rclone config

Type n to create a new remote, then name it:

name> pomona-onedrive

Select OneDrive Storage Type

Find and select Microsoft OneDrive:

Storage> onedrive

Select Microsoft Cloud

Choose the global Microsoft Cloud (option 1):

cloud_type> 1

OAuth Configuration

Type y to use auto-configuration:

y/n> y

Microsoft OAuth Flow

rclone will open your browser to Microsoft’s login page:

1. Sign in page: Enter your Pomona College email address
2. Password page: Enter your Pomona password
3. Two-Factor Authentication: If enabled, authenticate with your 2FA method
4. Consent page: You’ll see “Rclone wants to access your resources”
5. Grant access: Click “Accept” or “Yes”
6. Confirmation: You’ll see “The app is now authorized. You can close this window.”

Back on terminal, you should see:

2026/03/05 14:35:22 NOTICE: Microsoft OneDrive authorization successful

Choose Your OneDrive Type

Callout

OneDrive Options: Personal vs Business

rclone will ask which OneDrive to use:

 0 / OneDrive Personal
   \ "onedrive"
 1 / OneDrive for Business
   \ "business"
 2 / Document Library (from SharePoint)
   \ "documentLibrary"

onedrive_type>

• Type 0 (OneDrive Personal): Personal OneDrive (typically smaller quota)
• Type 1 (OneDrive for Business): Business account with larger quota
• Type 2 (Document Library): SharePoint site documents

For most Pomona students, choose 0 (OneDrive Personal).

Select Your Drive and Confirm

If you have multiple drives, select the appropriate number (usually 0). Then skip advanced configuration (n), confirm with y, and quit with q.

Verify the Connection

---

Test that rclone can access your OneDrive:

BASH

rclone about pomona-onedrive:

Expected output:

Total:   1.0T
Used:    8.4G
Free:    991.6G
Trashed: 0B
Other:   0B

List your OneDrive root directory:

BASH

rclone lsd pomona-onedrive:/

Now You Have Two Remotes

---

If you set up both Box and OneDrive, verify both remotes are available:

BASH

rclone config show

You now have:

• pomona-box: – Your institutional Box storage
• pomona-onedrive: – Your Pomona institutional OneDrive for Business storage (M365)

You can use rclone commands with either remote, and even transfer files between them!

OneDrive Storage Paths

---

When using OneDrive with rclone, remember these path conventions:

BASH

# Root of your OneDrive
rclone ls pomona-onedrive:/

# A specific folder
rclone ls pomona-onedrive:/Documents

# A nested folder
rclone ls pomona-onedrive:/Documents/Research

Challenge

Challenge 4.1: Configure OneDrive Remote

Follow the steps above to set up your OneDrive remote. Name it pomona-onedrive.

At the end, run:

BASH

rclone about pomona-onedrive:

Record the output: How much storage do you have on OneDrive?

Show me the solution

You should see output similar to:

Total:   1.0T
Used:    8.4G
Free:    991.6G
Trashed: 0B
Other:   0B

Seeing storage information (no errors) confirms your pomona-onedrive remote is configured correctly.

Challenge

Challenge 4.2: Compare Your Remotes

List the contents of both your Box and OneDrive:

BASH

echo "=== Box Contents ==="
rclone lsd pomona-box:/

echo "=== OneDrive Contents ==="
rclone lsd pomona-onedrive:/

Compare: Which remote has more folders? Which do you think you’ll use more frequently?

Show me the solution

OneDrive typically has more default folders (Documents, Downloads, Pictures). Box may have fewer folders if it is new. Use Box for institutional collaboration and OneDrive for personal storage.

Key Points

• Pomona’s institutional OneDrive for Business is the supported endpoint.
• The Microsoft OAuth flow requires signing in with your Pomona email and handling two-factor authentication
• You can configure multiple cloud remotes with rclone (Box and OneDrive) and reference them with their unique names
• Test your OneDrive configuration with rclone about and rclone lsd commands just like Box