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.
Ha, shows you right.
God, people, just get yourselves flash drives or an external drive. Cloud storage is dumb.
You could make either of those options last through your entire lifetime if you care for them properly. But I guess people enjoy the idea of going “huh?” whenever files mysteriously disappear from cloud storage.
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.
Most people aren’t choosing to enable OneDrive; it’s enabled by default, and not obvious how to disable.
Stop excusing the stupid. People are capable to learn to avoid it and disable it.
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.
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 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…
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
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.
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:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Our work does basically all of that…and I hate it
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.
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.
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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
They are so lucky microslop auto installs the Windows Backup app … oh wait …
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
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?
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.
Poor design and shit software
We’ve tried nothing and we are all out of ideas dot gif
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?
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.
It’s a work computer, so the answer is no.
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.
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 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!
Adding “cloud capabilities” during the slow death of capitalism wasn’t the best idea. There are a lot of opportunists out there!
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.
I don’t think Microsoft understands what cloud storage is supposed to be used for.
They understand it’s for training AI. They don’t care about anything else.
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)
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.
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.
This problem stems from the way OneDrive handles synchronization between the cloud and a user’s local system. Disabling OneDrive Backup without explicitly restoring or relocating local copies can, in some cases, result in files being removed from both environments.
Pargin noted that the only way to remove files from OneDrive without also deleting them from the local machine is to follow a detailed, step-by-step guide “There is no intuitive way to do it,” he said, accusing Microsoft of deliberately burying the necessary controls deep within menus.
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
If I delete something from the cloud, I should still have it locally on my PC.
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.
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
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.
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.
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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
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?
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.
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 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.
Who said it was your computer.
everybody, back when I bought it.
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.
Their persistence in wanting to download my files is my number one problem with Windows, and it’s a huge one.
They’re scooping up all the data for AI. They rebranded Office to just being AI.
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.
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.
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.
i don’t know how to use such black magic.
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.
It was a PITA to get my files to save locally and to stop auto saving to OneDrive
