I'm more upset than I've been in a while.
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@mathew @prism
I'm wrong. You're right. Happy?BTW:
I don't use any Microsoft product or service. I'm full in on Apple. All my files are in iCloud, which also saves most of them only in the cloud. Never lost any file. Why? Backups (eg. BackBlaze and external drive).And now, I wish you both a nice day.
@allezhub @prism Microsoft tell people that OneDrive is a backup and that their files are "protected". People believe them, and lose their files as a result. I do not believe that it's appropriate to blame the customer in any way in this situation.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/back-up-your-folders-with-onedrive
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Blocked three people today, which is three more than my monthly average. Gotta love the internet.
@prism know the feeling, some people are just flat out assholes
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I'm more upset than I've been in a while.
Windows 11 sets the default documents folder to onedrive\documents. Anything that gets saved there gets backed up to one drive. This includes various save games, all my Reaper stuff, and various other odds and ends that I like to, you know, save.
To save disc space, OneDrive also defaults to files being online-only. They're not stored on your device, they're just listed there. So despite what they call it, this is in fact not a backup at all, because it doesn't create an extra copy. It is actually just transferring your most precious, irreplacible, personal files to Microsoft in the background, and trusting that nothing will happen. You can see where this is going, but just to underline the point with a bleeding fucking dagger, I did not ask for any of this, I just clicked save like I have done for the last twenty or so years of my life using Windows.
Since I don't care about and have never intentionally used onedrive, I signed out of it. Flash forward six months, the files that I thought were on my computer (because I can go see them there in the folder) are in fact gone from my hard drive, and also Onedrive nuked them from orbit.
Years of my life, gone without a trace. Thanks so much, Microsoft. Whoever came up with all those ideas probably got massive performance bonuses, because we're in the worst timeline.
Goodnight.
@prism Sorry to hear that. What's not mentioned to far I see is to look at the shadow copy feature of windows to try to recover something, in the hopes *something* was at least on the drive after all. Even in home editions of windows, you can use a software like shadowexplorer to look.
Might be worth a shot. -
I'm more upset than I've been in a while.
Windows 11 sets the default documents folder to onedrive\documents. Anything that gets saved there gets backed up to one drive. This includes various save games, all my Reaper stuff, and various other odds and ends that I like to, you know, save.
To save disc space, OneDrive also defaults to files being online-only. They're not stored on your device, they're just listed there. So despite what they call it, this is in fact not a backup at all, because it doesn't create an extra copy. It is actually just transferring your most precious, irreplacible, personal files to Microsoft in the background, and trusting that nothing will happen. You can see where this is going, but just to underline the point with a bleeding fucking dagger, I did not ask for any of this, I just clicked save like I have done for the last twenty or so years of my life using Windows.
Since I don't care about and have never intentionally used onedrive, I signed out of it. Flash forward six months, the files that I thought were on my computer (because I can go see them there in the folder) are in fact gone from my hard drive, and also Onedrive nuked them from orbit.
Years of my life, gone without a trace. Thanks so much, Microsoft. Whoever came up with all those ideas probably got massive performance bonuses, because we're in the worst timeline.
Goodnight.
@prism This is an absolute nightmare. The last time I set up a Windows 11, I also noticed that everything in the home drive was being saved to OneDrive, and I remember being baffled that the default was cloud storage. But it was even more frustrating that it wasn't straightforward to disable. And now, through your story, we see the impact of this awful design. Thank you for sharing, and hopefully it prompts everyone that uses Windows 11 to take a closer look at how theirs is set up.
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@prism Sorry to hear that. What's not mentioned to far I see is to look at the shadow copy feature of windows to try to recover something, in the hopes *something* was at least on the drive after all. Even in home editions of windows, you can use a software like shadowexplorer to look.
Might be worth a shot.@norad Yeah so this is where it gets funny. Now that I've opened OneDrive, the files are gone completely. I do have a shadow copy backup from a couple days ago. I can restore it, which will restore the *indexes* to the files. So they appear to be present when I open the folder on my hard drive. But in fact, when I go to open these files, I am told they are not there. This was what prompted me to sign back into onedrive in the first place--only to discover that they are gone from there as well.
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@acerbt Everyone, literally everyone: I'm so sorry for your loss.
You: well, what you should have done is...
Jesus Christ dude.
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@norad Yeah so this is where it gets funny. Now that I've opened OneDrive, the files are gone completely. I do have a shadow copy backup from a couple days ago. I can restore it, which will restore the *indexes* to the files. So they appear to be present when I open the folder on my hard drive. But in fact, when I go to open these files, I am told they are not there. This was what prompted me to sign back into onedrive in the first place--only to discover that they are gone from there as well.
@prism
jfc -
@prism
jfc@norad This is why I'm losing my shit completely at the morons who can't read (not you! This was the most on point suggestion anyone has had yet) and tell me I should have backed it up. The backup was one drive. You fucking fools.
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I'm more upset than I've been in a while.
Windows 11 sets the default documents folder to onedrive\documents. Anything that gets saved there gets backed up to one drive. This includes various save games, all my Reaper stuff, and various other odds and ends that I like to, you know, save.
To save disc space, OneDrive also defaults to files being online-only. They're not stored on your device, they're just listed there. So despite what they call it, this is in fact not a backup at all, because it doesn't create an extra copy. It is actually just transferring your most precious, irreplacible, personal files to Microsoft in the background, and trusting that nothing will happen. You can see where this is going, but just to underline the point with a bleeding fucking dagger, I did not ask for any of this, I just clicked save like I have done for the last twenty or so years of my life using Windows.
Since I don't care about and have never intentionally used onedrive, I signed out of it. Flash forward six months, the files that I thought were on my computer (because I can go see them there in the folder) are in fact gone from my hard drive, and also Onedrive nuked them from orbit.
Years of my life, gone without a trace. Thanks so much, Microsoft. Whoever came up with all those ideas probably got massive performance bonuses, because we're in the worst timeline.
Goodnight.
@prism How is this not outsight theft? They stole files from your PC without your consent.
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@prism How is this not outsight theft? They stole files from your PC without your consent.
@xorbit First off, there's the reality of the situation, which is that law exists to serve corporations not the other way around. But also, assuming I were to somehow sue Microsoft and win, how to calculate the damages? They are priceless to me, worthless to anyone else.
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@norad This is why I'm losing my shit completely at the morons who can't read (not you! This was the most on point suggestion anyone has had yet) and tell me I should have backed it up. The backup was one drive. You fucking fools.
@prism Yeah people on the internet read a few words and then put their keyboard warrior capes on.
Next time I visit my grandparents I'll check these settings so the same won't repeat for them. -
@allezhub @prism Microsoft tell people that OneDrive is a backup and that their files are "protected". People believe them, and lose their files as a result. I do not believe that it's appropriate to blame the customer in any way in this situation.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/back-up-your-folders-with-onedrive
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@prism Good to know. There's a market void for making Linux and Unix BSD distros accessible for blind users.
@kimcrawley @prism If I may, here's a series of blog posts describing why blind people really can't use Linux reliably, as unfortunate as it is. I really wish things were different so I could run far away from Windows. https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-want-to-love-linux-it-doesnt-love-me-back-post-1-built-for-control-but-not-for-people/
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I'm more upset than I've been in a while.
Windows 11 sets the default documents folder to onedrive\documents. Anything that gets saved there gets backed up to one drive. This includes various save games, all my Reaper stuff, and various other odds and ends that I like to, you know, save.
To save disc space, OneDrive also defaults to files being online-only. They're not stored on your device, they're just listed there. So despite what they call it, this is in fact not a backup at all, because it doesn't create an extra copy. It is actually just transferring your most precious, irreplacible, personal files to Microsoft in the background, and trusting that nothing will happen. You can see where this is going, but just to underline the point with a bleeding fucking dagger, I did not ask for any of this, I just clicked save like I have done for the last twenty or so years of my life using Windows.
Since I don't care about and have never intentionally used onedrive, I signed out of it. Flash forward six months, the files that I thought were on my computer (because I can go see them there in the folder) are in fact gone from my hard drive, and also Onedrive nuked them from orbit.
Years of my life, gone without a trace. Thanks so much, Microsoft. Whoever came up with all those ideas probably got massive performance bonuses, because we're in the worst timeline.
Goodnight.
@prism That's terrible - what an awful thing to have happened to you, and what a stupid set of decisions from Microsoft.
Do you mind if I ask about how your computer decided to delete your local copies? I would like to be able to usefully advise members of my family who use Windows.
I'm mainly interested in how it was deciding to switch files over to being online only - could you tell if it was a disk space issue, or just files over a certain age, or was there no apparent rhyme or reason?
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@adredish @prism Yes, but most people want something they can set and forget, and there are backup programs that work well (and will scream at you if there'a s problem creating the backup), and forced OneDrivification of Documents folder breaks them silently (other cloud storage services can do the same thing, but you have to enable that yourself, and the OS won't try to trick you into enabling them by putting up security alerts like it does with OneDrive).
Having a script and a hard drive's fine, but most people won't want to bother with that – I know I certainly wouldn't remember to run my backup script if it wasn't automated.Totally understand the goal of "set and forget". I love set and forget.
But for critical path things, I personally find that a weekly routine of checks is a good thing to do. YMMV, but I was just pointing out to people that this works well for me. (And likely will work well for the unsophisticated computer users who are likely to have developed such non-computerized routines in their lives, which are the people we were originally talking about.)
100% OneDrivification is classic enshittification making things worse by drawing people into the prison walls.
(Another example is the fact that this kind of hand-driven "backing up texts" is to my observation nearly impossible. - if anyone knows of how to do this easily, I would love to hear it.)
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@altlazybear @Kay I've never been able to get used to Voiceover on the mac. The iPhone is fine but I'm always frustrated beyond belief when using it on desktop.
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I'm more upset than I've been in a while.
Windows 11 sets the default documents folder to onedrive\documents. Anything that gets saved there gets backed up to one drive. This includes various save games, all my Reaper stuff, and various other odds and ends that I like to, you know, save.
To save disc space, OneDrive also defaults to files being online-only. They're not stored on your device, they're just listed there. So despite what they call it, this is in fact not a backup at all, because it doesn't create an extra copy. It is actually just transferring your most precious, irreplacible, personal files to Microsoft in the background, and trusting that nothing will happen. You can see where this is going, but just to underline the point with a bleeding fucking dagger, I did not ask for any of this, I just clicked save like I have done for the last twenty or so years of my life using Windows.
Since I don't care about and have never intentionally used onedrive, I signed out of it. Flash forward six months, the files that I thought were on my computer (because I can go see them there in the folder) are in fact gone from my hard drive, and also Onedrive nuked them from orbit.
Years of my life, gone without a trace. Thanks so much, Microsoft. Whoever came up with all those ideas probably got massive performance bonuses, because we're in the worst timeline.
Goodnight.
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@kimcrawley @prism If I may, here's a series of blog posts describing why blind people really can't use Linux reliably, as unfortunate as it is. I really wish things were different so I could run far away from Windows. https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-want-to-love-linux-it-doesnt-love-me-back-post-1-built-for-control-but-not-for-people/
@BrailleScreen @prism well put
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I'm more upset than I've been in a while.
Windows 11 sets the default documents folder to onedrive\documents. Anything that gets saved there gets backed up to one drive. This includes various save games, all my Reaper stuff, and various other odds and ends that I like to, you know, save.
To save disc space, OneDrive also defaults to files being online-only. They're not stored on your device, they're just listed there. So despite what they call it, this is in fact not a backup at all, because it doesn't create an extra copy. It is actually just transferring your most precious, irreplacible, personal files to Microsoft in the background, and trusting that nothing will happen. You can see where this is going, but just to underline the point with a bleeding fucking dagger, I did not ask for any of this, I just clicked save like I have done for the last twenty or so years of my life using Windows.
Since I don't care about and have never intentionally used onedrive, I signed out of it. Flash forward six months, the files that I thought were on my computer (because I can go see them there in the folder) are in fact gone from my hard drive, and also Onedrive nuked them from orbit.
Years of my life, gone without a trace. Thanks so much, Microsoft. Whoever came up with all those ideas probably got massive performance bonuses, because we're in the worst timeline.
Goodnight.
@prism I realize this is going to be utterly Homer saying to Marge "Sorry doesn't put fingers back on the hand", but: the constant dark patterning is getting tedious and actual people get hurt. The first thing I did when I got a Win11 laptop to dip my toe back into tech practically 2yr ago was ... remove OneDrive because I was using Win11 without an Internet connection, or with a very sporadic, slow and expensive one. Microsoft's obscene sense of entitlement as an organisation with respect to its user base is on par with actual real life narcissist NPD sufferers. It's not impossible to do, previously in life I used Spideroak for this before it mutated into dancing dogshit, but much about Win11 is whack-a-mole.
I now use Cryptomator with rclone and a dedicated, non-US jurisdiction, offsite non-big-tech provider to do the job OneDrive fails at epically, or in a "Give us your dox or the data gets it!" privacy-abrogating way.
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@prism I understand that because of accessibility issues, Linux may not be a solid option, but I still stand by the advice: Never trust Microsoft. Although, I guess the corollary would be if you care about it, back it up. Because if you don't have multiple backups it's only a question of when you will lose it, not if. Of course that doesn't help retrieve what you've lost after it's gone, but it helps prevent you from having to face that issue in the future.
@wpeckham So who can I trust?
