Changes in Skydrive access on Windows 8.1

After upgrading to Windows 8.1 on my Media Center PC I have noticed a change in SkyDrive. The ‘upgrade’ process from 8 to 8.1 is really a reinstall of the OS and reapplication of Windows 8 applications. Some Windows desktop applications are removed. In the case of my Media Center PC the only desktop app installed was Windows Desktop Skydrive that I used to sync photos from my MediaPC to the cloud. This is no longer needed as Windows 8.1 exposes the Skydrive files linked to the logged in LiveID as folders under the c:user[userid]documents folder, just like Windows Desktop client used to do.

This means though the old dekstop Skydrive client has been removed my existing timer based jobs that backup files to the cloud by copying from a RAID5 box to the local Skydrive folder still work.

A word of warning here though, don’t rely on this model as you only backup. There is a lot of ransonware around at the moment and if you aren't careful an infected PC can infect your automated cloud backup too. Make your you cloud backup is versioned so you can old back to a pre-infected file and/or you have a more traditional offline backup too.