OneDrive just deleted all of my files
twitter.com
twitter.com
https://www.tiktok.com/@jasonkpargin/video/75915920529540252...
For context, Jason Pargin is an American novelist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Pargin
He’s not wrong to say all of those.
That video is really confusing. It makes a few claims:
1. turning off onedrive backup deletes local files from your computer
2. there's no way delete files on onedrive without jumping through a bunch of hoops or losing your local copy
3. onedrive sucks because the file is only temporarily kept locally, and if for whatever reason it gets corrupted on microsoft servers, you're out of luck.
Is there confirmation for #1? That's really the only point that seems relevant to the claim of "onedrive just deleted my files", but I'm skeptical that onedrive is that bad, and the fact that he brought up the other two points (#2 specifically) makes me think what might have happened was that he deleted files on onedrive to free up space on his microsoft account, not knowing that it would also delete the local copy. The latter is still bad, but is at least somewhat defensible because that's how services like dropbox work. Also, if it's really #2, shouldn't the files be recoverable because onedrive has a recycle bin?
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/3863319/...
> onedrive is that bad
guess what. Onedrive is that bad. this is far from the first situation i've seen with this pattern.
the microslop devs are doing great work pushing people off windows.
I'm out of touch with this stuff - I dropped Windows after Windows 7.
Have you seen the wonderful, extensive Microsoft help system ? Neither do I. /s
OneDrive gets installed with some default settings (which might change with every update) and starts syphoning user files to Microsoft servers.
Over in Mac land, iCloud still tries to handle conflict resolution sanely, but there's always going to be a sharp edge to cut yourself with anytime you sync files.
It may just be unsolvable for users who don't want to be opinionated and maintain a mental model of how syncing works. Is it sync? Is it a backup? It doesn't matter so long as you understand which one, but that's hard to square with computing being something for everyone, it's simply a bridge too far for many users who don't want to bother or cannot understand.
I guess the name "Microsoft" doesn't says anything to you. /s
The fact that Microsoft has stepped backwards from this is an intentional choice and should be criticized as such.
1. They sell Office w/ OneDrive plans, and push online-first work through corp and home plans alike.
2. They have become progressively more opinionated over the Windows ux in the last decade. Updates mandated, security agent coming installed, Secure Boot by default, drive encryption by default, etc just like corp fleets do as a standard.
Files are the logical progression, if you squint here - MS is the user's administrator, since Windows arguably needs a sysadmin to make it usable. This is.. not new in the corp model: messing with the filesystem or linking to remote file systems has happened since the bad old days:
-remote shares
-roaming profiles
-folder redirection
-OneDrive known folder move
I think this is the click of the ratchet, as Windows continues to take ownership of its OS back from its users, bit by bit.
One problem with just relying on the native filesystem is that while SSDs are tremendously reliable these days such that they make mechanicals look laughably flaky, any FS can get corrupted, and with encryption by default, you're usually leaving users up a creek.
Anyway, the Microsoft view, best I can tell, is that a PC should be more like a phone - an appliance, managed by the vendor. They know the filesystem is a great solution - their filesystem, not yours. If you use their PC with an online account, it sort of works like that. If you try to hold on to ownership, non-tech users usually end up mishandling the sharp edges at some point.
At least on Windows 10, you only have to decline once, here’s how. Ctrl+Shift+Esc to launch task manager, “Startup” tab, right click on “Microsoft OneDrive”, select “Disable” from the context menu, then either reboot, or log out and log in.
It's a stringized number splatted out as a user-locale specific format:
"UnoDrive" et al.
A colleague of mine in Switzerland got a letter from Microsoft addressed "Dear New Year's Eve"...
weekly it selects a directory at random, deletes the entire contents, then puts a 0 byte file with the same name in its place
OneDrive is not backup.
RAID is not backup.
I am doing regular backups yet I have a few backup disks unpowered for years. They are older, progressively smaller backup HDDs I keep for extra redundancy.
Every 2-4 years I am getting a larger backup drive, and clone my previous backup drive to the new one. This way when the backup drive fails (happened around 2013 because I was unfortunate to get notoriously unreliable 3TB Seagate), I don’t lose much data if at all because most of the new stuff is still on the computers, and the old stuff is left on these older backup drives.
That's exactly what he had - it didn't safeguard against file loss, but caused it.
For example, rsync and rclone will happily overwrite/delete your files if you mess up the argument order.
The problem with OneDrive is not that it is cloud-based, but rather that its design is somewhere between baffling and intentionally user-hostile
Or I could have paid Microsoft. But I did not feel like it.
He writes for a living so presumably his files are of considerable importance to him. His rage is quite palpable (from the second tweet in the thread):
> Whoever designed and pushed this literally deserves pain in their life. I cannot imagine how much fucking misery and distress they brought into the world. If you are out there, fuck you. Personally, one human to another, fuck you. If I could physically hurt you, I would.
Keep in mind this is coming from an extremely measured, empathetic and thoughtful individual; not someone quick to anger or likely to rant on social media.
Backups of course would have helped.
basically one drive is the only place it's stored until you try to access it then turning off backup will then delete all the local files.
This super aggressive OneDrive shit is also why I've stopped putting most things in the standard folders and now just have my own alternative hierarchy in %USERPROFILE% instead.