Windows users keep losing files to OneDrive, and many don't know why
When Windows users suddenly discover that their files have vanished from their desktops after interacting with OneDrive, the issue often stems from how Microsoft's cloud service integrates with the operating system. The automatic, near-invisible shift to cloud-based storage has triggered strong reactions from users who find the feature unintuitive and, in some cases, destructive to their local files.
https://www.techspot.com/news/110848-onedrive-backup-feature-making-users-local-files-seemingly.htmlOpen linkView original on reddthat.com790
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Years ago Microsoft had its OneNote Notebooks as proper files, you could move and copy them and such. Now it’s nearly impossible to get your hands on a “tangible” file using this software.
During that transition- from usable to shit, I made the mistake of uploading my notebook, with all of my uears of course studies (college, professional certifications, etc) into onedrive. That way it could be backed up! A year later I moved my files again into a different system, moving away from OD. They were MY files after all.
What I didn’t know was that Microsoft had moved my Notebook somewhere else into their cloud, on my behalf, and changed my Notebook file to a shortcut/pointer object. There was no indication it was a shortcut as with other documents (the little arrow) on windows. It looked just exactly like the original file.
Well when I tried to open this “file” I got the rudest awakening: Microsoft couldn’t find the “linked” notebook. “What fucking linked notebook?” Apparently, when I moved my “file” (shortcut) out of overdrive, they saw that as a deletion and DELETED the now referenced file they helpfully moved for me.
All of this without ever a single notification; Microsoft deleted years of critical notes with no recourse for recovery. It was just gone.
Ass holes.
Shit! I'm soon to go Linux and now there's one more thing for me ro figure out then. I have some stuff (not a lot, but some important stuff) on OneNote, lucky me that I made the switch to Obsidian a couple of years ago.
+1 for Obsidian. Copy-paste to other pc = immediate access without setup. Plug & play. Also free.
I use git to sync my md notes instead of obsidians paid sync service also. I’ll never go back to proprietary non-text based notes files.
Obsidian isn't open source, if OP or anyone else is concerned about that.
If you self host, go Joplin. I was unimpressed with obsidian's ability to use the same notebook in multiple systems easily, and Joplin lets me easily sync my notebook between systems using a docker container I host as the sync server.
Recent ones I've been trying on Linux:
Logseq (Markdown only)
Flatnotes (Markdown & WYSIWYG)
MarkItUp (Markdown & WYSIWYG)
Trilium (Markdown & WYSIWYG)
By far, I'm enjoying Trilium over the others. Trilium can do LaTeX, while Flatnotes and MarkItUp can't (don't remember if Logseq can). That coupled with What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) note taking - the kind of text editing like Microsoft Word, Apple Pages, or Google Docs - makes thing work just like OneNote. Plus, one of the things I was really looking forward to seeing in a Personal Knowledge Management System (PKMS) was a graphical/node map view of all my notes, which again Trilium does.
I'm actually considering making one of my old laptops a perma-server that I can run Trilium on so I can access it on both my new laptop, my phone, or pretty much any other device with an Internet connection.
Last thing I'll say is that it doesn't hurt to try everything and see what sticks!!! Before settling down on something permanent that works for you, that is.
If you do ever end up in that situation again, (or someone else is,) you can download the notebook by moving it into a folder in OneDrive. Then go to the web and use the option to download the folder. That will zip up the folder, with the real one drive files inside.
You'll still need to find an app to import them into your new note taker though.
That sucks, I'm sorry. I've been frustrated by OneDrive, but thankfully not to nearly the same extent.
Firstly, I did discover that it's not a setting you can just turn off, because that will suddenly remove all the personal files and folders that were backed up, until you turn it back on. I knew I could work around it, but dragged my feet. Still, it was the first big push that eventually convinced me to use Linux.
Secondly... it'll also do the inverse. I play Tabletop Simulator with my friends, and it backs up files to a OneDrive-covered folder. It quickly took up too much space, and to avoid all the warning signs designed to irritate me into subscribing for more storage, I tried to delete it. Turns out, that doesn't work, because OneDrive will assume it was an error and put those files back, and maintaining all those super helpful warnings about storage space.
So, whether you want to keep a file or get rid of it, don't worry, OneDrive can and will find a way to fuck it up.
I've had something similar. It's absolutely infuriating and shows the complete lack of respect they have for the users.
Linux welcomes all refugees
I moved one old laptop to Linux over about a year ago, and committed to an effort to actually make it do the things I wanted to do, like play games, and run Windows-only tools or find viable replacements. To say it went well is an understatement. Within a few months I had switched every computer I owned, and I'm never looking back again.
Granted, I was already quite familiar with Linux on the server side. This was not my first attempt to use Linux on the desktop, either. But it was my last, because I'm never going back to Windows ever again now.
Valve made a big move when they started their Proton project. That was a key compatibility layer for a more wide-spread adoption.
It was shocking at how fast it went from 'you can tweak it to run most things' to 'I don't even check to see if the game works anymore before I buy it'.
I just made the switch and probably for good this time, and Steam just working was a HUGE moment for me. I opened up a guide thinking I'd need it, but I just downloaded Steam, didn't change any settings, and could start playing.
At this point, Linux is more of a "just works" experience than Windows 11 was.
I also made the switch with no plan of looking back, and the only thing was that some odd interaction between the integrated and dedicated GPU caused the Steam UI to not work. The fix was disabling "Hardware accelerated Web" something something, and I was playing shortly after downloading the first game.
Oh yeah, I remember hitting that snag in an earlier attempt. I managed to do it, but it was definitely a point where Windows worked more easily than Linux. Glad to hear it's gotten easier!
Yup this was me back in early October saving an old box I wanted to keep around as a media server.
Before the month’s end all my computers are on one Linux distro or another.
Happened to me at work where they force us to use Windows 11. I had turned on the autosave feature on a Word document I was working on. Little did I know this meant it stopped saving the changes locally and started saving them on a OneDrive copy. I then worked all day on that file.
The next day I notice the file on OD, find it odd that it is there so I delete it because I want nothing to do with OD. I then open the local word file and realize that none of the work I did the day prior was saved.
I figured out what happened and fortunately the file was still in the recycle bin. But fuck that whole system to begin with. It won't even let me use the autosave feature locally.
I have similar issue with Google.
At some point I used to use Google Photos backups. I wanted to delete the backed up files, but there's no way to do that. It would also delete them from the devices.
And I guess it checks them based on hash, because even in the main view it always figures out where the files are currently stored, if on device, even after I moved them elsewhere. Otherwise these other images only show up in their respective folders, not the main view.
I had trouble like this too, so what I've done is just give up on using Google photos in any meaningful way.
I still sync to it as a temporary backup, but I periodically copy all media from my device to my local home storage as the true copy.
I have yet to implement a proper open-source alternative for photo organization, but hopefully that'll be one of the projects completed this year.
One of the problems I was having was that I wanted to take photos that I did not want to sync to Google photos, and yeah just deleting them from Google photos would delete them from my device as well. to get around this, you can force quit the application on your phone, work with the photos however you want, and then restart the application. as long as the photos aren't in a location you have set to sync to Google photos, it should be fine. also sorry to my coworker who had to see a whole row of photos of my dogs disgusting butthole with a ruptured anal gland before I figured that out.
Just in case you've not heard of it, I can highly recommend Immich. If you're familiar with Docker it's incredibly easy to set up, and even if you're not it's not that complicated.
yeah it's on my list, but ty
Go beat your IT department with hammers. I have roughly a decade in IT with primarily Windows in our environment. There's no reason for it to suck so bad in a corporate environment. They can disable it entirely very easily, or make it work amazingly well with some effort.
My workplace:
We redirect/sync My Documents and My Pictures to OneDrive seamlessly. If it's saved in either of those, autosave is on and it's the same file locally and on onedrive. Files saved follow to any machine. Viewable in explorer always, actually downloaded locally on the fly as needed. Obvious overlaid icon on every file to indicate if it's synced, syncing, or not available locally (when you're offline and can't connect to one drive). You can right click files and folders to easily adjust if they're always downloaded up to date locally or just on demand.
If there are any conflicts it can't auto-merge (usually only non-office docs) it saves them with the source computer name appended to the end of the file name so you have each version available, and it pops up a notification that stays until it is manually dismissed, so you know it happened.
If for some reason you're working on a document outside of the synced folders, office programs do not default to saving in one drive, they default to where the document was opened from or to "My Documents" for new docs, so shit doesn't get silently moved on you. I can and have had the same doc opened on multiple machines at once, made edits on each, and it worked just like live collaboration with other users.
It doesn't have to suck, and it's also easily disableable entirely in enterprise environments if your IT doesn't want to configure it well. We kept it entirely disabled from our environment until we had our config planned and thoroughly tested with a pilot group for a few months before we let it hit the company as a whole.
I work for a huge organization and my local IT guys have their hands bound. I couldn't even make a ripple in that ocean even if I tried.
I'm sorry, that sucks. It really only takes about ten minutes to search up the settings to turn off the saving redirection in Office programs and toss it in the default Group Policy settings, but I'm sure that at a huge org that would end up stuck in absurd change review hell that IT folk seem to try and avoid.
the thing is.... you shouldn't have to "search up the settings to turn off the saving redirection in Office programs and toss it in the default Group Policy settings". cloud shit in windows and ms office needs to be optional, and explicitly opt in
I don't disagree, but corps are going to push the settings in their software and products that makes them the most money. It sucks but should be expected.
It'd be better if there were competitve open source options with the same ease of use, of implementation at scale, and ease of management at scale, but unless you're willing to do custom forking and dev work, most of the time it's easier to go with whatever is the overwhelming standard is and work around the rough spots, as at least then you'll almost never be in completely uncharted waters.
I spent a few years building a custom solution for integrating a semi-popular but still relatively new HRIS system with a hybrid AD/Entra environment with a somewhat unique hybrid Exchange (email) setup. Doing it live, no real documentation to speak of because the few other places that had done it turn out to be consulting groups that sell their solutions for ridiculous amounts of money. My workplace has now hired an entire team and spent at least half a mil on a new software suite that will replace my solution eventually, after more dev work by this new team.
That was after I burned a year trying to figure out how in the hell I could programatically try to clean up a horribly misconfigured and mismanaged old SolarWinds Orion setup that had accumlated tech debt for years, only to be stymied because they don't allow public discussion of their fucking database structure, and what I found out myself was batshit. Don't trust software that use their own custom bastardization of SQL.
After those experiences I'm pretty damn content to stay in the land of "well documented and popular" and just work around the rough edges. Keeping up with patch and update news and delaying updates a little usually gives plenty of time to effectively opt-out by changing the settings before it hits our environment at large.
Fuck Microsoft's bullshit, but at some point it's the enemy you know, especially in a corporate environment. I'm no stranger to masochism through tech work, but I've gotten used to MS's brand of fuckery, as a lot of us have.
No... then they don't do what I'm talking about. I'm sorry you deal with the suck, but your IT team still gets hammers.
My workplace backs up to OneDrive itself. No requirement of work VPN, just sign in on a work machine with internet connection and confirm the MFA prompt.
Technically OneDrive is some unholy patchwork on top of Sharepoint Online, as evidenced by a ton of back end settings going through the SharePoint admin UI, but that's not relevant to the discussion.
I didn't even know it was possible to hijack Onedrive to point to SharePoint Server. For that matter who in the absolute fuck is still using Sharepoint Server? It went out of support two years ago, and extended support (at significantly extra cost) ends July 14th.
There is technically another On-Prem version past 2019, but it's obvious bare minimum life support.
Plus, Microsoft locks so many of their security and other features baked into Azure behind Office 365 E5 licenses that most places are just using those for Office etc, and those come with a shit ton of storage per-user in OneDrive and SharePoint online.
We also don't have auto-deletion turned on (yet). I've already done what I can to talk my boss out of it, but we will have options to prevent it on specific files and folders, as we already do with email (auto delete past certain age, unless it's in the archove folder. you can set up auto archive rules if you need, but there's rules on max space).
TL;DR- Your workplace does not in fact do "essentially what I described", which is a large contributor to the issues you've seen. Go get hammers and beat your IT staff with them.
Especially the Sharepoint Server shit. That's horrifying. No one should have to even think about touching that. Ewwww.
Respectfully, no they fucking didn't. Having to be on the VPN and deleting shit after 2 years are BAD configs and falls under beating them with hammers as noted in the previous comment.
Its been years since being able to save files on my laptop hard drive for work. Its all onedrive. The company uses it as protection - if the laptop is stolen theres no proprietary data on the drive. It also ensures if my laptop breaks all my work is intact.
The autosave feature is also linked to allowing several people to work on documents simultaneously. This is probably related to forcing onedrive use. You can share links to the files, and being able to edit simultaneously is useful. If you turn off autosave like I tend to do sometimes then when others open the file at the same time you all end up with your own version and cant see what the others are doing.
At home I use linux. I got fed up ages ago with MS stealing my files.
The thing that pisses me off with the auto sync option is that it's just not how a lot of files that we have are used
I don't want to see a file with 10 different versions in the past week all because somebody opened it and didn't modify it and closed it. I want to open a file, find out what I need to, and close it while knowing that I did not make any changes to that file.
sure, this problem could be avoided somewhat by managing user permissions, but oh guess what that's a fucking pain in the ass the way Microsoft has that set up too
I dont get why you'd avoid using onedrive in a work environment.
Because they don't know how to use it properly, or intentionally use it wrong and complain when they lose data.
I'm not going to defend one drive in the slightest, because it irritates the shit out of me. But reading through this thread is giving me flashbacks to end user support and listening to old people not understanding why they're causing their own problems. Like the number of times I've seen 'it appeared in one drive and I didn't like it so I deleted it and now my data is gone, what the hell' both in this thread and irl is nuts....
At work they forbade the use of one drive. It literally was consuming hundreds of terabytes of data and many more on bandwidth because they activated auto sync on thousands of laptops after an update without telling anyone. It was synching entire hard drives of confidential information without our consent. By the time our IT realized, they were trying to charge us for it (web do have SharePoint on azure). Turns out there's some you can disable by group policy, but the shit is so embedded that it cannot be completely turned off. So they are just instructing workers how to avoid it now and warning everyone that, although we do have a quota per install of one drive, any loss of data is the worker liability as we are being told not to use it. Microsoft is such a joke.
We are facing similar issues with copilot by the way.
OneDrive is the most aggressively stupid and evil file sync service I've ever used. Constantly upselling, actively re-enabling terrible defaults to maximize storage and bandwidth used, terrible at sync resolution when used with multiple systems, and punitive data loss when you try to disable excessive backups.
It's one of the main reasons I stopped using Windows at home outside a VM.
I have a personal vendetta against OneDrive because it literally holds your files hostage. It uploads your data without your consent and then threatens to cut off access to your own files unless you pay up. It actively fights you when you try to regain control, up to and including reinstalling itself once you finally manage to uninstall it.
It's the main reason I finally got serious about switching to Linux (which I have and it has been amazing)
I'm still mad though, fuck Microsoft. Evil assholes.
I've never lost a single file on OneDrive. That's because I do not use OneDrive.
Eat shit, Microsoft.
Most don't realize they have it, or that they have a choice. It truly sucks is how few non savvy users realize that Microslop has removed their files and placed them on OneDrive instead (read "stolen.") Between that and unannounced silent Bitlocker encryption, Windows has become more dangerous and destructive than any ransomware out there.
This is the only way
Fuck those cock wombles at MS, they'll likely be using your data for "training purposes" too.
Yeah I wasn't thrilled when I saw they added it and tried to force it, so I disabled it. Very glad I did!
I have also never lost a file on Onedrive and that is because I am not a moron. Been using Onedrive since it was Skydrive on all my devices including Windows 10 Mobile. All of my clients in my business use Onedrive as well as my clients business. It sounds like you don't know how the tech works.
This code is similar to the progress bar. When it reaches 100% do nothing for a while to keep people guessing.
Progress bar have to show random timing. It's more complezzxx
Someone hacked the government
They are so lucky microslop auto installs the Windows Backup app ..... oh wait .....
Years ago I tried to use the WIndows backup app to back up my system disk to a tape streamer. (Magnetic tapes were and still are useful as long term backup.) Result was a backup you coulndn't recover. I don't know what exactly was on the tape but it couldn't be read back. Tried the same with a harddisk, same result. I've since then used various external backup tools that had no problem creating backups that you actually can recover from, never looked back at MS backup. You just can't trust Microsoft to store any important data. You can only be sure they'll fuck up sooner or later and take things in you own hands.
Happened to me, too. Now I just ignore OneDrive entirely. I don't think Microsoft understands what cloud storage is supposed to be used for. If I delete something from the cloud, I should still have it locally on my PC. The fact that this isn't the case means essentially, that OneDrive isn't actually a cloud service. They're trying to get you to pay a subscription fee to use your own hard drive. You know, the one you're already using for free. I wonder why that isn't taking off? 🤔
This is what made me stop using Google Photos and start self hosting Immich. I lost a video from my house construction that showed where the cables were exactly laid.
onedrive is even more intrusive than google drive.
I still haven't forgiven google for hijacking the g:/ drive letter. I was using that letter already!
Not that it matters to me anymore since I use Linux now, but still.
I still prefer them hijacking a particular drive letter to Microsoft's approach of not even using a drive at all
Yes thank you so much Microsoft for making every single employee's file path different when we're trying to send each other the location of files, all of them within unnecessary multiple levels at the start (inevitably resulting in file path too long issues) because the default installation is c users user documents OneDrive
this is actually one way that I see which of my new hires actually read the fucking onboarding document and followed the instructions. One of the first steps is "unlink your OneDrive account and set up a OneDrive folder in the root of one of your drives instead" (with actual instructions on how to do that). two out of three new hires without fail will send me a link in their first week that points to c users. It's a nice litmus test for who is going to be useless and/or a pita
Regardless of which is better, I had mine configured exactly how I wanted it and they changed it without my consent and broke my system because of it in a way that I previously thought wasn't possible.
It would have been fine if it was a setting that I could enable and configure myself to my liking.
yep, it's absolutely infuriating that they do that shit. you do some work around to make shit actually function, and then they just go change it on you without actually adding the functionality you needed
They understand it's for training AI. They don't care about anything else.
OneDrive is for syncing files across devices. It's not a backup.
Edit:
Since there seems to be a lot of hate on my comment, allow me to explain.
Backup software has a schedule, it has monitoring, it has alerting (email, SMS, ticket submission, etc), and checksumming. OneDrive frequently just shits the bed for whatever reason, often goes unnoticed in the corner, and users frequently miss it and nobody, not even IT, know. Not to mention it's riddled with bugs.
Yes, you are copying files from point A to point B but it is not the same. If you rely on onedrive as a "backup" you're going to be disappointed at some point when you lose your files :)
If you delete a file over here, then it disappears from over there. That's not a backup. On a real backup, if you delete files or lose them or whatever, you have days/weeks/months to go back on versions to restore.
The problem isn't one drive's purpose, it's that it's so shoveled into windows that people that have no idea what it is use it accidentally then see files disappearing. It's unintuitive shovelware with terrible UX, a dreadful combination.
Oh. So it should be called Onesync?
I disagree, it can easily be both. I pay for Google drive and don't have the client on any of my devices except for my phone, and it's replicated to my NAS. I use as a form of remote backup and not to sync files.
So like syncthing but you have to pay for it and requires a server. Seems useless...
If you want to sync while not all devices are online, just spend 50$ or something and get a RPI and put syncthing on it.
Then it shouldn't bitch at me about storage limits. Does it expect me to delete my shit again? All I'm hearing is OneDrive is better off being ignored entirely.
Right, so how many files you have on your laptop do you also need on your phone? How many desktop does Microslop think the average person has? If cloud storage is actually only cloud syncing, is there a market?
Most of them. I use my files across my Windows laptop, desktop, tablet, and Windows 10 Mobile. The syncing allows me to have access no mater what device I am on. Just because you don't use this feature, does not mean it isn't useful.
That's why I asked about the actual files. I know it's cool to have the ability but really it's typically only specific files, not every fucking thing you ever opened or saved. And please keep in mind people on Lemmy are not your average user. Most people have a phone and one other device at most
Sorry, that makes no sense to me. These cloud sync apps are setup for mirroring. If you change one side, it's reflected on the other. This is just user error (or poor UI, lack of explanation on what delete does in the cloud)
If that's the case, then OneDrive shouldn't bitch at me about storage limits. What does it want me to do? Delete my shit again?
But what's the point of it then?
I guess if you have multiple computers you can access the files from either computers. But for people that just have one computer the whole thing seems kinda useless. And then MS forces people to use this product they have no need for by holding their computer ransom. People don't want their files on One Drive, they only have it because MS forced it upon them.
This is like forcing a passenger to fly a 747 and then saying "well the plane crashed because of pilot error" and ignoring the fact that someone was forced some to be behind the controls of something they understand against their will.
For a home user, a backup service or just a way to share files actually makes more sense than something that mindlessly syncs file actions, including deletes. One Drive could be useful if it were what people expect it to be. As it is, it's useless for most people, and bad on them for thinking MS One Drive was a useful product I guess.
Don't point out people are misunderstanding the product, we're here to shit on the product for anything and everything
To be fair when it's a product a person didn't ask for and the OS forced it on them, it's not unreasonable that they may not understand how it works and make mistakes.
Yeah, you can't yell at someone to RTFM when they didn't opt to use the product, and the "manual" is just a barrage of question on a Microsoft support forum where every answer goes to a Microsoft.learn page that hasn't been updated since 8.1.
It is unreasonable to assume you can delete a file from a sync app's cloud dashboard and not expect that the deletion would be synced to the device.
I get that OneDrive is a mediocre product that gets forced on end users, but so many people turn their brains off and just try to kill it with fire instead of thinking through their actions before making rash decisions. Deleting it from the OneDrive directory is marginally less rash, but again, people delete files without validating the original is where they thought it was.
It is unreasonable to expect users to understand.
Or read, be it app popups or error messages. Or learn how to use tools that have been in place for years. Or take basic responsibility for their inability or unwillingness to learn and understand.
At some point, saying "it's unreasonable to expect the user to understand something" is itself unreasonable. Maybe it's because I've been in IT for like 20 years, but I have minimal sympathy for people who choose not to understand the basic utilities that they have to interact with for their jobs that have been in place for a long time. At the very least, you should know how file management works if you're making files as part of your job, and that you don't just delete files from your system, especially important business files...
Read the article. That is not what is happening.
It is a dark pattern, it is meant to scare or annoy the users into paying a subscription or leave the system as is. There's exactly one cloud service that deletes all files without warning as soon as it is disabled. There's only one service that deletes local files without telling the users, there's only one service that deletes both originals and cloud files when disabled, and it is only OneDrive. Every other service warns users and give grace periods for the users to download their data before deleting the files for good. It is absolutely not the user's fault.
I wasn't replying to the post, but the op who stated
So let me get this straight. Microsoft is taking your local files, without their consent, onto their platform where they can delete them for "terms of use" violations, alongside tracking what you do on your own computer.
Sounds like they don't want you to use your computer in a way they don't want you to.
They're scooping up all the data for AI. They rebranded Office to just being AI.
Who said it was your computer.
everybody, back when I bought it.
Their persistence in wanting to download my files is my number one problem with Windows, and it's a huge one.
Whether or not they are “my” files would be the legal test in the given jurisdiction. It probably gets even blurrier if the file was created in ‘my’ licensed version of MS software application x. And blurrier still if created in the cloud version of said software and stored direct to their cloud storage platform . I’m assuming with most saas or cloud things that its never my file and im just renting access to something they own even if i created it. You distinguished “local” in your comment though, so this is where the win11 tactics have been a new level of scummy and scammy with the forced syncing etc . The whole OS is theirs. or is it mine ? Do i need a legal team everytime I install software? This whole idea of consent as well…. yikes . I’m glad we have options.
The problem is most users are unaware their files were being stored on the cloud in the first place. I had a friend who kept downloading mods on his computer only to have them not show up if he was offline. Turns out it was stored on their servers and not locally. All due to Microsoft making sure they stay as little transparent as possible and not warn users that their files are automatically being stored to onedrive.
We need heavy regulation against these sociopaths before it's too late. This is only going to get worse.
Honestly most of the issues with OneDrive are from one setting:
Files On-Demand - it's turned on by default. It uploads all the files in the drive to the cloud and then deletes them from the local computer. Its absolutely, fucking stupid and should be banned.
It's infuriating. They silently move all your files to their cloud and you don't notice. Then one day they tell you that you have filled your cloud quota and they want more money. Switching to local only is, by design, a huge pain that tends to go wrong.
sounds like MS is extorting users.
Poor design and shit software
We've tried nothing and we are all out of ideas dot gif
Seeing all the horror stories in here makes me glad that I recoiled in horror the first time MS offered the idea of me putting my files on their computers instead of mine.
I know why. Because they were using OneDrive.
dropbox and google drive have both erased data from me without copying it properly. these are not "backup" services they destroy your data
Dropbox has a policy about two years ago that all of your data will be shared with AI, no opt-outs.
I immediately cancelled my plan and dropped to the free service, which I use to backup photos of my poop.
Ugh. Well they got all my shit already so no point changing now. I use my friends dropbox and hes a photographer and videographer for a living. Ironic that the very service hes paying for is going to scrape his data and replace him.
Most people ive ran into have no idea how to even access a file if its not in a Google drive or dropbox so good luck getting them to understand anything else. My friends complain non stop that I dont use corporate services for every single thing like they do 🙄
Been using both for decades never had one file go missing that I have ever not deleted myself, or set to remove after backup.
I haven't died yet, if we are sharing random arbitrary personal experiences. I expect to in the future.
Well considering that I've been in the IT industry for over 20 years at this point. And as long as you have things set up properly and you know how things work then this really isn't an issue. It's not just my personal experience is also the experience of any of my clients it's experience of any of the places that I've ever worked at it's the experience of any of the thousands of people that I've interacted with and probably tens of thousands of people have interacted with over the past 20 years.
Been doing IT for nearly 30 years here.
Computers shit their pants whenever they feel like it.
I have been doing IT since 1867 and I’ve never run into an issue.
Bullshit, all punch cards eventually tear
I was hoping you’d play along :’(
I’ve been in the IT business for 26 years and I’ve seen software screw up, even when configured correct. OneDrive have lost many files for people to the point that Microsoft more or less apologised for it in 2015.
OneDrive is shit though.
Oh I fully agree out of all of these options one drive is definitely the worst of them. And I've seen many many files lost through one drive because it's really difficult to configure it correctly and most the time it's fucked up because Microsoft continually changes what you can and can't do with it and how it updates and how it doesn't update and now with the latest change and the forcing of users to utilize it it's becoming even worse.
Maybe, I just don't like "And as long as you have things set up properly and you know how things work then this really isn’t an issue" - you can set things up correctly and then it still screws up. Everything works perfectly until it doesn't.
I hold the middle ground. When set up properly, the services do tend to work just fine when left alone. Consumers often have automatic updates enabled, that is where shit hits the fan sometimes. I have had the issue of files disappearing. Fortunately, they reappeared some time after. Not sure what Microsoft was doing -- we will never know.
You don't have backups for your files on Google drive?
Of course I do. But it's also my backup for files. You always have at least 2 if not 3.
Okay, because you're responding to a person saying they've lost files, on an article thread about people losing files. You seem to have all the tools to understand what's being discussed and yet you're still being obtuse about it.
No I'm calling their bullshit.
You're the kind of person that says gems like "Computers don't make mistakes, sir", Arent you?
cool
Cool
I have uninstalled One Drive and enabled a system policy that supposedly sets the default save location to c:\user\documents, and after every single fucking update it defaults back to one drive, hangs for 30 seconds until the stupid ass system realizes that there's no such thing present, and then it opens a "save as" dialogue with some arbitrary path in %user_apps/appdata/onedrive.
GNARF.
A better fix would be uninstalling Windows
You know that's a novel and insightful musing that no one's ever thought to share before.
It's brave of you to go on Lemmy and suggest the solution to a Windows problem is to uninstall it.
A lot of people on lemmy long ago realized that if you have enough problems with windows, the problem is windows.
That fix has a lot of side effects that might break something. Unless you're intimately familiar with their setup and use case, destructive solutions aren't a safe recommendation.
It's a work computer, so the answer is no.
Switching to Mint turns out to be quite a decision. Missing none of the fun.
Just wait until you actually need to restore using timeshift.
I've done that a few times now without issue. What's wrong with it?
rolling back or restoring data from a cooked system?
Rolling back, sometimes because of file system corruption (had damaged RAM). Shouldn't restoring be similar as long as the snapshot is intact?
Never used Mint, but Time Shift was a god send to me for about two years on EndeavourOS. My first two years on Linux. I was able to learn so much by not having to worry about breaking my install.
I rolled back more times than I can count without ever really encountering any issues.
Set it up to automatically take a snapshot before every update, and add the few most recent snapshots to grub. All automated and really easy to set up.
Yes rolling back is easy but restoring from a major error using timeshift is not.
Have seen similar comments on that specifically on mint before, does mint have a particular problem with it? I used timeshift to restore manjaro a couple of times and it was very confusing but I assumed it was just me.
I thought TimeShift was a bit of a pain to restore from. So I switched to Deja Dup and haven't had any issues with it.
i don't know how to use such black magic.
Having had to fix a friend's installation because timeshift filled up the system drive, I would say one of the biggest problems of mint is that it comes with timeshift enabled by default (and with shitty settings). I recommend keeping manual backups, and not trying to restore a system, as opposed to setting it up from scratch.
I use [not arch, but] debian, btw - haven't had the system break on me in > 10 years. At worst, some driver gets messed up temporarily, but nothing that ever rendered my system unusable.
After using TimeShift, I find Deja Dup better than TimeShift.
I think its fine to have by default but issue is that when people run into critical problems its not easy to restore from the back up. Currently if you cook your system you need to put a live USB in and then run timeshift and restore.
I would consider it to be an easy to use backup tool if the timeshift backups are in the grub menu to be booted into if there is any issues with the main install. But I dont know if this is possible or not.
Well - to be fair, if you "cook your system", you have a boiled system. It would be haphazardous to rely on the system booting for restoring a backup. It could be an option, I guess, as long as the system still boots.
This only happens if you use Windows with an online account. Poor souls were probably forced to do this.
What does that mean? If I have a 3+ year old Windows am I unlikely to be affected?
If you use Windows with a local account and unlinked to OneDrive, yes.
What does that mean. A local account?
That's what I said. A... local account. I'm confused. A local account is an account that only works with your PC, a regular user account not related to any web service.
I see. Thanks. I have an outlook account attached to my pc so this does NOT apply to me and I'm apparently in danger of this occurring.
Yep! My windows 10 is not hooked up to a real Microsoft account. It tries to force me to create an account every few months, which I laugh at.
I made the mistake a few years ago on my win 10 gaming tower and creating an account to play Xbox live, and suddenly, I was getting that garbage one drive shit.
What is a "real" Microsoft account?
Why handle files? Let big bro Microsoft handle them for you.
It was a PITA to get my files to save locally and to stop auto saving to OneDrive
Windows is just malware designed to steal files and data from the people "stuck" using it.
and also extorting the users too.
On the other hand, a lot of people are learning how important a tested backup strategy is.
...and don't forget re-testing your backups regularily. I had a really good backup strategy on my Loonix machine. Automatic (or it won't be done), tested, fool proof. When I somehow crashed a somewhat complex encrypted LVM array while swapping HDDs against SSDs, I had to recover from backup. Unfortunately I had become a better fool than I was when I set up backup4l. I had changed the compression algo, made a tiny mistate in the config and failed to realize that for six months I had been storing empty backups every day. Outch.
Notifications will go a long way toward helping with that. Check all assumptions, check all exit codes, notify and stop if anything is amiss. I also have my backup script notify on success, with the time it took to back up and the size and delta size (versus the previous backup) of the resulting backup. 99% of errors get caught by the checks and I get a failure notification. But just in case something silently goes wrong, the size of the backup (too big or too small) is another obvious indicator that something went wrong.
I know. I just had become lazy enough to take the daily notification's subject line ("backup4l has run successfully") as evidence that everything was OK. If I had looked inside the bloody mail I'd have notices that the backup's size was 0B all the time because my self-rolled XZ-compression script failed to add data to the archives it "successfully" created. That's what I meant with "re-testing" - I should better have written "re-validate". My unforgiveable fault was not to look directly at the generated archives after changing the compression from bz2 to xz. Which was pretty pointless anyway as it turned out.
Its because they are using it.
People often don't know that they have a choice. It enables itself.
UBUNTU!!! I am a professional sound engineer forced to use W11 (or iOS if I had more money) but the SECOND my hardware has Linux support I'm gone. God I HATE MicroSCUM with their onedrive vomit account pukiness (sorry, I could not control myself just now)
I heard its microslop now, their CEO loves it.
You realize anything iOS that Apple has been doing this for years with icloud.
Out of interest what type of engineering and what type of hardware? I’m a (lifelong) music Hobbyist with a passing interest who also works in tech stuff kind of. I’m presuming live sound is your world since you mentioned ios rather than mac os ? Linux seems the perfect candidate for that world though I guess the various companies also do their own proprietary systems in the digi mixer worlds and such ?
I run a recording studio and I use RME hardware
Ubuntu has kind of fallen out of favor with a lot of people, myself included. It used to be my go to, then I went mint, now I run fedora Bluefin.
IMO, if they want to Ubuntu, let them. We all have our favorite flavors, but whatever they're comfortable with is a fine point to start with.
Oh for sure, do what you want to do. I'm just saying, while everyone has their opinions, some people like to follow the crowd of popular opinion, and the crowd is moving away from Ubuntu. Maybe not everyone knows that 🤷♂️
Ubuntu is like the moon. It waxes and wanes with the spinning of the earth. Basically every few years it gets popular then every few years those people that made a popular move to something else and it drops in popularity and then suddenly it becomes popular again when a new group of people come out and try linux. It's a very user friendly basic version of Linux that can be made very powerful.
If they want ubuntu, let them Linux Mint! :D
Why not straight up Debian?
Because the standard version of Mint uses the ubuntu repositories. You get to utilize most of what makes up ubuntu, but decoupled from the stuff Canonical wants to push. It has some added polish as well.
It was more of an ubuntu-specific reply rather than "what's the best distro" thing.
But now that you mention it, there is also Linux Mint Debian Edition! :D
I might actually start using LMDE at work, since we have some stuff that's more focused on debian than ubuntu.
Ubuntu is just Debian with some closer to bleeding edge stuff installed then PPA and Snaps. Debian is more stable, you just have to wait a bit for the latest DM. I consider not having Snaps an advantage :)
I tried it out with Bookworm, Had KDE Plasma, Steam and everything else I wanted up without a lick of terminal work.
Mint is fine, though, honestly, all derivatives are fine. Cannocial is the one stand out that has their head of their ass, but they're still better than windows.
The whole "We're using snaps now. We like snaps so you like snaps" attitude rankled a lot of people.
I let my work computer use one drive. It’s not my stuff. I don’t care about privacy or who has access to it or what MS does with it. Plus it’s easier when they force me to another machine.
Admin here! OneDrive synced home folders at work. Everyone ignores saving because 'autosave'. Once a week at least, some staff member spends hours on something after the mandatory 90-day password change, never signed back in to OneDrive, and gets to kiss all that work goodbye. Also, once a quarter at least, someone was working on a document shared to the by an employee who just quit, so we have to frantically 'unfire' someone's account so the suddenly missing document can be retrieved.
90-day password changes?? You monster!!
sigh I know. It's my boss that implemented the policy... But it was after she audited password ages and a dictionary and found that CompanyName123 was universal and for years at a stretch.
Ah, such nostalgia. I used a complex password until they forced monthly resets on us and I forgot mine a few times. After that, "FuckingPassword1", "FuckingPassword2", FuckingPassword3" etc with a mysterious post-it note on my table with a single number. Very memorable, still remember it well after a decade.
If it’s something I care about, code and scripts I use for my admin stuff, it’s on GitHub. Stuff that I will keep when I leave or get fired/laid off. The stupid bullshit paperwork for work, can’t care less if onedrive eats it. But I know exactly what you are talking about, been there and done that.
I imagine that's mostly a concern for admins and less so for the end-user.
No, it's end-user panic. "That report me and Bob were working on? It's gone! Emergency! Panic!"
Not only is it panic, but by the time you're looped in it's already half way up the management chain and you can't see the end of the cc list.
As the admin you should fix onedrive seamless sso so th yr don’t need to worry about signin.
I often wonder what Microsoft thinks their users do. I'm offline on my computer all the time, whether it's a plane flight or at a place without good WiFi, there's no replacing offline capabilities. Even when I am online, I don't live in silicon valley where there's fiber optic everywhere, and most Comcast users still live with a data cap, I don't want to offload everything onto my internet connection. OneDrive is supposed to be a tool to make switching computers and traveling easier, but the result of how they manage it is the opposite.
Does this not happen in Europe? Never known OneDrive to be so intrusive.
It's possible that this isn't enabled by default in Europe. I know that Microsoft has some things disabled in Europe in order to comply with local law and moving stuff to OneDrive without asking sounds like it might conflict with the GDPR.
I discovered this week that on three separate dates around a year ago, a bunch of files in my team's SharePoint were deleted. this went undiscovered until now because working with those projects was put on hold last year, and only the files themselves were deleted (not the folder structure).
if the folders had been deleted too, I might have noticed and thought "hey didn't we have something here?" but since only the files inside the folders and subfolders were deleted, and those files were not being worked with, I did not notice
tysm microsoft
I would guess it trys to "backup" them to onedrive and deletes the local copy but there is some problem that causes it not to actually add it to the onedrive, so result is no file anywhere. And it does this with its own permission of course, without informing user about anything.
No the issue is once enabled your home directory becomes onedrive. People feel they are saving files into their users/myuser/Documents but they're actually saving it to users/myuser/Onedrive/Documents. These files are being synced off into the cloud and only pulled down when requested. Then the user decides they dont want onedrive and so they turn it off by unlinking their account. Now they feel they've lost their files but they havent the files are still in one drive and they need to go get them after that they have local files as normal.
Its purely user error encouraged by microsofts pushy implementation and bad design.
It is this, coupled with so many people not even knowing that they are using OneDrive (because it was automatically enabled if you have a Microsoft account linked to your Windows install, and Microsoft pushing to link your account).
It switches to storing files on Onedrive without warning.
Then if you disable Onedrive, you lose access to your files (on Onedrive) and their memory space is reused.
It doesn't actually delete local storage, as the path is just switched.
Sounds like a reasonable idea for the issue presented. Mean the issue could be on one drive saying the file is there and complete, or many other issues since I don't know the API in the least.
Yours would be my first guess for sure, it thinks it completed so delete local copy, which is what you'd prefer in that situation, well mostly, I sort of prefer a local working copy but need some other names and the program to recognize thm with then upload on actual save to the cloud storage....I say that and still curse at excel when it says it has a backup copy from a forced reboot, always keep one open heh.
Actually to be fair I hate those storages for that reason so much crap can go wrong without a knowledgeable user it makes things worse. You just hope the program can tell if it did it was done correctly heh and if not then end up clicking the wrong button and it's all gone.
Local NAS for anything you think you'll need, random 'free' cloud storage as a general backup. Mean I assume the NAS has raid so mostly good without more.
Wait, this is ... news?
Hasn't this been happening like, constantly, since they rolled out OneDrive?
No.
Oh I mean... it has, because the UX and UI are fucking awful and confusing and changing all the time.
That was a rhetorical question.
Time to use TwoDrive
EDIT: Or "Time TwoDrive", if you prefer
TwoDrive or not TwoDrive that is the question
I prefer ThreeDrive or even FourDrive
Just don't use TwoTimingDrive
Step into my office.
You’re fired.
8 minute abs! You can’t even get your heart pumping at the number 4!
Maybe the lost photos are in Zerodrive
Saving stuff yo dev null is handy. Always has space.
What about ThreeDrive?
AIDRIVE, WILL be named changed from ONEDRIVE.
AIDRIVEWILLONEDRIVE?
Fortunately I have backups on proton drive and Dropbox
At this point I'm surprised there's still files, and not an AI trained on the files that you have to describe the contents to so it can maybe give you something resembling your file.
I've struggled to find an epithet for MS that would really sum up my anger in a single epic childish insult. Problem is, they already surpassed anything I could come up with.
They are tiny and flaccid, and no one should pay them any mind.
Microslop
Shit like is literally why i have a saved winscript json that gets run on all work machines after "updates"
Interesting. Care to share?
winscript
After you've configured your parameters, you can save the file for future re-runs, or on other machines. I just made a master that rips out all the bullshit (boss won't pay for anything over home edition for the rendering machines) and slap it about
Thanks. I'll check it out later today.
Adding "cloud capabilities" during the slow death of capitalism wasn't the best idea. There are a lot of opportunists out there!
Windows update will frequently reenable OneDrive. Microsoft systematically undermines people ability to understand and control their own device.
It's not dumb as a concept. Cloud storage in a data center offers far more safety than an external drive of any kind.
But it should not be the only place your data is stored. It should ideally be the third place.
While I agree with you, most people don't understand what cloud is and since Microsoft is pushing users to use OneDrive, general user would just turn it on just to get rid of the window.
Exactly. I work with the Elderly and it's been a struggle to a) explain what OneDrive is and b) show the how to locally save because W11 defaults to saving to cloud.
It's an absolute mess and I've gotten at least 3 people to start using Linux, just a little.
So I had the weird issue that none of my shortcuts were showing the proper icon, instead showing the blank piece of paper placeholder(even in the taskbar). Was digging through some other settings for something and found a bunch of one drive settings left on. Turned them all off and suddenly my icons are back to normal. Not sure if it was trying to access the files in the cloud instead of locally and wasn't loading them properly or what. Either way, One Drive absolutely fucks a lot of random things up
I run a recording studio and I use RME hardware
I dont want to jump to conclusions since techspot is a dogshit outlet for information. Can anyone give me an example of onedrive users losing their files? I checked out a few reddit posts and tech fourm posts and none of the users seem to have actually lost files due to one drive. It seemed that users were getting confused at the onedrive file path overriding their default home path or unhappy that their onedrive hit a storage limit. Like most of the posts are about things that very clearly cant happen with onedrive.
Oh no it’s far worse than that. Essentially what happens is One Drive takes over your entire home holder, and then makes the copy in OneDrive the original. People try to disable OneDrive and then delete the copies in the cloud, only to find out OneDrive will then delete the local copies from your computer.
It is a syncing app, not a backup.
Yes one drive replaces the default path locations with its own onedrive locations but the local folders are still there under ~/users/user/Documents etc. Also Disabling onedrive doesnt delete the copies, they are still there in microsoft cloud the user needs to go grab them. The users are using a tool that moves unused files to the cloud, its expected that they take the necessary steps to reverse that when they stop using that tool. You cant just disable onedrive and expect everything to magically be downloaded back unless you click the download all button or go to the website.
The issue is users dont know how it works and dont want to know. I dont blame them since microsoft is so dogshit at ui/ux to the point where its malicious.
No if you download the local copies back then delete them from OneDrive, OneDrive will delete the local copies you restored to your computer.
It’s also important to note that the users aren’t “Using OneDrive” intentionally, so they aren’t even aware that there are steps they’d need to reverse.
The issue isn’t the users at all. The issue is that Microsoft has a software that takes files off your computer without permission and puts them on their computers. And then make sure it’s obtuse to safely get them back.
No because they would go to the download folder which isnt synced with onedrive.
Yes this is the biggest issue with onedrive but its still on users to administer their system at the end of the day. That means doing the bare minimum research when removing something as integral as Onedrive. You cant just turn off a home directory sync service and not make sure your stuff has been downloaded out of that service.
I think it may have happened to me. I had a file saved to my documents at work, I go to check on it and it's got a red X and won't open.
I also sync the documents directory to gdrive and because onedrive deleted it, so did gdrive.
It's unimportant work stuff though on a work machine so it doesn't bother me that much.
I thought I was going insane. I have been losing files frequently, but have a detailed file tree and I'm diligent about naming and saving versions.
I still don't know how it works. I have files from 2015 there I don't remember about.
Well, people need to learn to keep their fingers out of random, no cost cloud things. If this learning process involves painful data loss, maybe the lesson sticks better.
Garbage article, but I think what they are saying is if you don’t restore your files from backup before you disable your onedrive backup, then you lose your files.
This sounds like user error.
If the people in question were choosing to use OneDrive in the first place, I might agree with you. Since MS is forcing this crap on everyone it’s their fault when people lose data to it.
Last time I set up a user account onedrive was not forced. It’s suggested and you had to click a few buttons to turn it on.
I wonder if other apps that do cloud offload work in the same way: disable service and you lose cloud-sync’d content unless you downloaded it ahead of time.
I’m also curious if onedrive prompts you to save/downlod your data first.
When I went to save a file on my work laptop, it always tried to default to ScumDrive. I had to tell it to save it locally.
That data isn’t the problem. It’s the backed up folders that’s the problem.
My sister’s brand new Windows 11 laptop came with the user data folders replaced by OneDrive and I very seriously doubt she did that intentionally.
During user profile creation she accepted that option.
She doesn't know what she accepted man, that's the fucking point. I doubt it asked her "Would you like to mirror all your personal files to MS servers, run the risk of data loss, and pay us a yearly subscription if you have more than 2GB(or whatever their cap is) of photos/documents?".
Shouldn’t know how to cancel/disable onedrive either then and doesn’t need to worry about this fear mongering article.
She doesn't, no. But who do you think she's going to ask about it when the popup tells her she needs to pay out to store more files? What do you think i would have told her to do before reading this article?
Confusing and bad UI/UX is... confusing and bad.
We're all glad you're a poweruser, anyway, can we maybe have an operating system that doesn't actively hate and fight the user?
How are people connecting this to politics? Like, I scroll down and find people saying that this is a capitalist idea and shit. Please chill guys not everything is politics you don't have to think about them all the time
Capitalism isn't a political system. It's an economic system.
And I think it's totally fair to point out how "a company making a product worse because they make more money off the worse product" is one of the flaws of a capitalist economy.
oh.
ok.
I don't understand politics or economics x_x so thanks for giving a brief explanation :)
i'm so sick of hearing about the cattle version of windows 11.
the very least you can do is get the pro version, which doesn't have any of the problems these articles always harp on.
Ah, yes, of course, just pay MSFT more money, that'll solve the problem.
... and you're calling other people cattle?