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Comment by bilekas | Hacker News Reader

One drive is an insanely poorly implemented solution to a problem nobody really had.

For enterprise companies, ones I've worked in at least, they will auto sync the users folder /c/Users/(name) with one drive, but there is some weird alternative they have to set on the windows system to actually use a workspace for the user.

So when I'm on site somewhere, and have no access to a network that's safe, I can't access files that are in my documents folder, pictures or desktop.. when I never asked OneDrive to lift and shift my days off my machine.

I've had the guys turn off one drive explicitly on my machine several times but it keeps reactivating itself as soon as I sign back into the AD.

They can't figure it out, I can't trust it, and the company pays for it.

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I’ve seen a lot of people have issues with git, because this is going on in the background and they don’t realize it.

They’ll change branches, then OneDrive sees files are missing, so it starts pulling them back down. It makes a mess.

Any new hire we get, we need to make sure to explicitly tell them not to keep their code in a folder managed by OneDrive, but they never listen. They speak up about a month later, complaining about weird issues.

On my last laptop refresh I also had to manually enable the sync. It didn’t just happen. I knew if I used the local folders that would eventually stop working and things would get lost.

I’ve also seen a lot of confusion from people who save something to their desktop, and it’s not there… because they didn’t save it to their OneDrive desktop. This is always fun to explain.

OneDrive is also now our backup, but they only sync 3 folders from the home directory. If your work has you using other folders, good luck and enjoy your data loss. I setup a scheduled job to backup some of my other key files to OneDrive, but that was quite annoying. I’m sure I’m in the minority.

The enterprise enables all this stuff, but never actually tells anyone. They think it will “just work”, but it creates a confusing mess that every employee eventually has to figure out.

It is irritating how Microsoft markets onedrive as a backup solution, because then people think 'oh, we have onedrive, why do we need another backup solution?', when onedrive is so unsuited to being the working copy of so many different kinds of data.

The problem is, even though one knows that OneDrive is not a viable backup solution, Microsoft crippled its own "Windows Backup" feature and buried under the rock.

Now I have to pay another company to be able to have a proper backup solution. Why trash your own competent solution for monies and data extraction? It's not a wise move.

There are actually really good free backup solutions, like https://kopia.io/ Tried a couple of paid ones first because I didn't know about them, but this is even better

Thanks, looks interesting. For my personal Linux systems, I use backintime and pay for Acronis for my parents' Windows system right now (since it can also image disks and whatnot), but I'll keep this in mind, too.

Thanks again.

> It is irritating how Microsoft markets onedrive as a backup solution

Microsoft has a long history of messing with user files (Sharepoint checkout to "My Documents" wherever "My Documents" points today. Avoid at all cost.

Also, it's not even a backup. If your files are only on OneDrive (which is the default "storage save" setting), good luck recovering them if they break into your account.

I keep my code in OneDrive. I probably have hundreds of repos cloned and active. Been going like this since like 2018 or so.

I’ve never had problems except for warnings about deleting lots of filed when I git branch or checkout or whatever.

I would expect onedrive not to pull down files after a checkout because from a file io, it’s deleting and copying in new files, right?

You're pretty lucky, then. This kind of file sync is a cursed problem in general (in that a truly robust solution is just not possible), but onedrive seems to be particularly bad in terms of reverting local changes, not syncing changes, and generally messing things up, especially when there's a lot of files, and even when there's only one user of the data. (it also makes anything involving writing lots of temporary files even slower, like most software builds).

It needs to read the repo under .git; that’s a lot of files that may not be synced, depending on local disk space, frequency of use, etc. The local disk is just a cache.

There may be an option to Always keep on this device, which might help.

Sometimes there will be a delay while git rebuilds the index and pulls everything down. But its never affected my commits or anything substantial.

This is why we had to add some group policy changes to ban One Drive throughout our agency. Additionally, some of our work is "confidential" and non-public which also got the legislature to ban the use of One Drive for most stuff (they specifically stated "cloud").

> I’ve seen a lot of people have issues with git, because this is going on in the background and they don’t realize it.

Having git tied to a one drive folder is diabolical. We might aswell move back to SVN at that stage.

And as someone who worked and still works in IT support, users will not save to network drives, their machine will crash and files will be lost.

YES, you can do GPO redirect desktop etc to network drive but needs a VPN and sync is also slow.

OneDrive has solved this, like it or not.

>So when I'm on site somewhere, and have no access to a network that's safe, I can't access files that are in my documents folder, pictures or desktop.. when I never asked OneDrive to lift and shift my days off my machine.

Probably enterprise config. Standard OneDrive office 365 enterprise with SharePoint can absolutely work over the "normal internet", you don't need a "network that's safe" whatever that means. VPN? Anyway the big office 365 win was it will work over the normal internet without running /owa open on your exchange server.

>And as someone who worked and still works in IT support, users will not save to network drives, their machine will crash and files will be lost. [...] OneDrive has solved this, like it or not.

In my previous job there was an app(by Dell EMC I think) that would run every day at lunch and backup all your user document folders to some company network drive. You could then view all your backup files in the webUI.

So network backup feels like a solved problem for decades now.

However, cloud is more than just a backup solution.

Some jank 3rd party app is never preferred over a native MS solution.

Lol. OneDrive is the most jank solution there is.

The failure modes of OneDrive outweigh the wins for many individual users.

It may be good enough in the aggregate from the perspective of IT admins.

No catastrophic failures, just a steady drip of confusion, friction, frustration and lost productivity for the users.

Id rather the people being irresponsible with their files lose them than me randomly.

My IT even set up my downloads folder to sync... my job involves downloading 4gb files and throwing them away after I run a script on them frequently...

That sounds more like an issue with your relationship with your IT guy than OneDrive as a product.

Not necessarily blaming you for the relationship fault, but someone forcing using the software improperly isn't really a failure of the software.

The second part is, yeah. I'm more annoyed with the whole concept and was using that as evidence of its reliability, and also about how we're willing to sacrifice time without thinking about tradesoffs when it comes to "more onedrive backup better"

That's why Dropbox exists. Superior in every way.

You could use an actual backup solution, OneDrive is not that.

Cloud document best use case is document sharing for online collaboration, backup is a side effect, and frankly, as backup solution it is far from ideal.

Frankly, the best configuration is NOT installing OneDrive on user machines, actually disallow users to install it and let them share files from office 365 itself when they actually want to share those files. And then, have a proper network backup solution.

Make

Also just having your stuff available on multiple devices, having it be easy to move devices, etc.

All that said, I don't like the deep desktop-OneDrive type integration, very much a clear, separate sync folders type person, even if I store a bunch of my stuff inside said folder. But Sync Service Kingdoms are to be very clear, it's the one way they will be ~99% benefit, 1% headache.

The best thing you can do with an enterprise Onedrive is having long long file and folder names. The moment it exceeds 255 characters, the software application dies. I am ready to hear easier fixes but so far this worked:

- Rename the offending folder from the web

- Unlink the folder from the user's machine

- Delete the existing onedrive folder

- Relink and resync

The best part is, the web side of onedrive has practically unlimited length, the windows part has. As long as you don't sync, you don't experience anything but god forbid if you try to do it.

Also do not get me started on "Add a shortcut/Sync" debate. All in all, onedrive feels like a system that works but will feed you to the wolves the moment it hiccups. But on the enterprise side that's the only game in town so... we suffer altogether.

An elderly family member rearranged her family tree into folders that were so deep it broke onedrive entirely.

Of course it was not set to keep all files on the PC so it just trashed them.

Be careful.

I turned onedrive off and removed it. Then just cross fingers she drops dead before the disk does. If I go over there I robocopy it onto a USB stick.

My workplace has named (forcefully) the onedrive folder with around 35 characters. You add to that the path to that folder on the computer that is (forcefully) not on the root of a disk. I now mostly need a flat structure for my files. 4-5 subfolders and a file and onedrive dies.

You can change that setting in Windows so that it no longer has a 255 character limit.

Yes, you can but then if you have any older software in your system (for company reasons) will not play ball. And it is a workaround, not a permanent solution. Because we still do not have that fabled WinFS so...

Eh, NTFS supported long paths since forever, the problem is with applications using Win32 APIs that are limited to MAX_PATH (260 characters) path length.

There won't be a permanent solution unless all Windows applications start using NT path formatting - which won't happen.

One drive still dies though

Win64 lacks the problem with 255 characters [0]. However, stuff like File Explorer, which the vast majority of my users actually use, can only pass the first 255 characters to the registered application [1], so will Explorer will display stuff with huge long paths, double-clicking that file, or right clicking and "Compress to..." will cause an error.

0 - 32 bit windows will always have this problem.

1 - This is because File Explorer uses a hodgepodge of Win32 and Win64 stuff behind the scenes when running 64 bit windows.

so many times,… I’ve lost count

The whole thing is a cobbled together bodge over SharePoint as a backend. I wouldn't ever trust my company data with that dogwater product.

Back when I had to work with it I found a bug that could cause folders to become un-synced without you realising, meaning changes would not be tracked and cause merge-conflicts when it was fixed.

Managed to use our Gold partner tickets to raise the issue with the product team, they flat out refused to fix the issue even knowing it was a bug. This was back in 2020 or so, I wonder if they ever fixed that bug. It's pretty simple to reproduce:

1. - Sync a nested subfolder from Sharepoint

2. - Sync the parent folder

3. - Note that the folder synced in 1. is not longer being tracked (no checkmark)

4. - Normal users will now go to folder 1. by default and have no idea none of their changes are no longer being tracked now that it's being synced within folder 2.

The university I attend uses SharePoint, classroom and moodle for various courses.

SharePoint is by far the worst piece of software I've ever used. Like, there's no mental model to be done, not intuitive, not working, files disappear from time to time, and I could go on for hours

Moodle is also pretty garbage-y if I may say so.

I'd say its ui is not that great and it is not intuitive when searching courses, but at least it... Works? I mean, using SharePoint might require me to reload the page more than once because I literally don't see the files sometimes

Isn't sharepoint itself a cobbled together on top of Microsoft Exchange mailboxes?

Plus some WebDAV hacks via the MS Frontpage HTML editor! Truly great software engineering and design.

So it's MS products all the way down.

Somehow finding the Frontpage HTML editors down at the bottom makes it feel slightly better. At least it bring a fond memory while navigating our corporate Sharepoint horrorfest.

Don't forget the worst SQL Server database I have ever seen. Single threaded hacks all throughout because it so shitty it can't deal with parallel queries.

Plus the sync results in so many errors and duplicates even on a personal drive with one machine that it is not fit for purpose.

Downloads folder to the rescue, hallelujah!

I have almost exclusively used the downloads folder since a late teen, because I realized it was the only place where I could trust microslop to not mess with my stuff.

Now I mostly use my self hosted cloud, but I do still have all of my short term things in downloads that don't need a form of backup

> solution to a problem nobody really had.

It's honestly been great for my org. We used to have custom user-specific shared drives on the network. Laptop replacements were constantly hindered by people not understanding how to transfer data. Since we rolled out OD (not my decision by a mile), that's been consistently easy.

OneDrive likes to come back when O365 updates I think, but you might be able to change the settings to just not back those dirs up?

No access to a network that's safe? Do you have a zero day on SSL we should know about?

You can easily set OneDrive to keep a local copy of all files.

Come on, a problem nobody really had? I wholeheartedly disagree. Data loss and the orthogonal problem of lacking free space on computers is/was a massive problem at enterprise scale and OneDrive, for all its many shortcomings, is well and truly into good-enough territory to cover the 80% case. I'd go so far as to argue that the scenario you've described is by far the less frequent one. And if it frustrates you, you're afforded the ability to designate files and entire folders to be kept downloaded at all times anyway.

Data loss and storage is always a challenge, that's why companies will have network drives, network storage that's not strongly coupled with your account acess. OneDrive doesn't solve the problem in a clean way. It adds an extra layer of brittleness.

Network storage does not handle the online/offline switching as transparently as OneDrive (or other cloud storage).

For large enterprises that old architecture you refer to means long lead times on network and storage outage notifications, and huge fallout if an outage window is blown.

And if the building network goes down, or if your storage servers are located off site because you’re too big for one building and the commercial internet goes down, etc etc

But it doesn’t have to be OneDrive. There are many other options. I run ownCloud 10 for my personal files. If I were a small to medium business, I would look hard at OCIS.

onedrive doesn't really handle online/offline switching well. Unless you configure it carefully, it will generally not keep stuff local and so things will break without an internet connection.

Network drives mean no local retention and no real good answer for Windows+Mac+Android+iOS clients to remotely access the files. It also doesn't solve sharing those files externally with granular permissions.

All of these kinds things need protection against data loss and centralized control+management, not just the user folder alone.

> Network drives mean no local retention

Technically speaking, Windows does support client-side caching on network drives. I've used it in the past for a highly limited number of users (read: me, on a personal share) and it works kind of like OneDrive/Dropbox/other cloud platform. But it's really rough and doesn't handle conflicts well.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/iis/web-hosting/configurin...

10 years ago this was not a key requirement. But now it is

Sadly One Drive has pushed out the implementation of proper DMS in some instances.

isn't that also the case witf onedrive because it deletes local copies?

With OneDrive if you edit a file offline and someone edits a file online AND it's not a file type edit it can attempt to merge (like with Office documents) you end up with "{name}-conflict.{extension}" files rather than deleted local copies. You also get version history of files and the recycle bin of files deleted from the cloud to recover any mistakes from.

And as someone who worked and still works in IT support, users will not save to network drives, their machine will crash and files will be lost.

YES, you can do GPO redirect desktop etc to network drive but needs a VPN and sync is also slow.

OneDrive has solved this, like it or not.

Sure. And you wouldn't need phishing protections if users had brains. But then you run into real users so hand-holding solutions start to make sense.

Seems to me that if you want to experience data loss, Sharepoint is going to cover your needs just fine.

>One drive is an insanely poorly implemented solution to a problem nobody really had.

I highly doubt that the need to steal as much data and media from people to train AI was a problem nobody really had.

You are conflating private OneDrive with enterprise Office 365 Sharepoint based solution.

Also that came out 10-13 years ago... way before AI. Why are people on this site such midwits?

I guess because the general hatred of Microsoft interferes with people's ability to think logically.

> hatred of Microsoft interferes with people's ability to think logically

100%. I fall in the 'I hate MS (and Apple, and Google, and...)' crowd myself. I lose brain cells every time I have to use MS products, so I definitely make nonlogical statements about these companies sometimes. I admit that my biasies are strong and one can't fully trust my opinion when I talk about these companies. But I do try to lace mostly truth, even if I exaggerate.

> Also that came out 10-13 years ago... way before AI.

Do you think AI training and preceding data vacuuming started yesterday? Was there no "Big Data" hype immediately before LLMs took off?

> Why are people on this site such midwits?

Address this question to a mirror.

I get the irony lmao

But Big Data was just a large SQL set for companies internally. Usually. The sinister part would be adverts and tracking I guess if that is what you are fishing for.

I'd guess it is more about making companies paying more and higher subs than training data.

Standard sub gives 1TB per user.

Laptop drives are still 256 or 512GB in office work.

No real need to pay for "higher subs"

It's about pushing subs in the first place. Normal people don't need it they can save stuff to their HD/SSD like they've been doing for the last 30 years.

But here comes Microsoft enabling OneDrive by default. How many tech illiterate folks have been pushed into paying for 365? Fuck MS.

I am talking about companies to be precise.

Office 365 was and is a godsend compare to running Exchange and massive SANs on-prem...

They knew this so Office 365 at first was literally only email at first so people could stop having OWA on prem open to the web.

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