Need help with "One Drive"

We recently lost our home to fire. Had to get a new laptop so I could start to record/transfer pictures to it and eventually to send them to insurance company. (I use a digital camera, not a smartphone to take pictures and save them to the laptop).
I have received notice that my "One Drive" is almost full. I didn't even know the pictures, etc. that I have already transferred to my laptop were stored on there as well!
I know they can be deleted from One Drive, but I need reassurance that this will not also removed them from my laptop! And how do I know that they are really saved on my laptop??
I know absolutely nothing about how that One Drive works, so will appreciate any "simple" explanations on what I need to do will be GREATLY appreciated!
I'm not all that computer savvy, so please bear with me if you reply and I don't understand.

 

Here is a snapshot of the quick access folder/file on my laptop. Are these also on my laptop somewhere?

 

Hi Vicki, I have the same frustration with One Drive. As I know from my comp, your pictures should be stored/collected in your Picture Library on Your HDD/SSD. I get a notification that my One Drive is Full and I will need to buy more storage space???
This is a ploy to get money from us. One Drive is not compulsory! It is "cloud" storage.
If my SSD storage is filling up, I will notice it and Reduce Data/media/photos by exporting to an external storage.
One Drive has about 5GB of storage free, but MS would like to make some money from us, so once that free space is taken up --- they want you to pay for more. It's our choice these days!
I don't know what storage you have on your laptop, but most new ones are setup with an NVME card of 128GB (some are larger) which contains the OS.
Then there may also be a 1TB (or larger) SSD/HDD for your data.

Open OneDrive settings (select the OneDrive cloud icon in your notification area, and then select the OneDrive Help and Settings icon then Settings.)
...

1. Click the OneDrive cloud icon up in your Menu bar, click the three dots to open the menu, and select Preferences.
2. Go to the Account tab.
3. Select Unlink this PC.

As I said, your choice, which is what I prefer.

 

Thank you for that helpful info! I did manage to "unlink" this PC. Whew!lol Now if there might be anything on there (from my old laptop that was destroyed from the fire) that I was unware of, would I still be able to view it or transfer it to this new laptop (without having to sync it again?!)

 

I would imagine this is your only option as MS control it.
Backing up or Cloning to an external storage is what you should consider.