I'm more upset than I've been in a while.
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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 must be devastating. so sorry to hear this 🫂
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@wpeckham So who can I trust?
@prism I would say, "Well, you can trust me", but that would not be helpful. (and honestly, I don't recommend you just trust someone who says that.
) But trusting a company who has let you down so flagrantly before does not seem wise. Microsoft has been betraying its users, partners, and third party developers since 1980 that I know about. And I am not saying "don't use their products", but I am saying don't trust them. If you're going to use their products or services, cover your ass. -
@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 This is why you should stop the backup before you sign out, and for each folder, choose to keep the files on the pc when you are stopping it. Works for me every time. If i forget to do this I can sign back in and fix it without much trouble usually since i do it when I run a new install for the first time while I'm installing things and setting stuff up.
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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 You know what? Some peoples' internet drops. I bet Microsoft will reverse course when important peoples' documents get saved in the cloud and they miss their shit and complain.
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I'm so sorry. For everyone reading this - make local backups of everything you care about on an external hard disk. They are not hard to use and they are not expensive.
Make a weekly habit of copying them over.
Unplug the external HD when not in use.SyncToy (still available, still works fine) is easy to use and fast. It's from Win7. But you do not even need it. Just make a weekly habit of backing files up locally. Do it as part of your weekly house cleaning chores.
This has saved my a** so many times through computer crashes, Windows resets, and all the rest of life's messiness.
@adredish not expensive? Have you seen the price of storage lately?
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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 is so fucked up. There’s a setting in Apple’s version of this I should check.
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@prism You know what? Some peoples' internet drops. I bet Microsoft will reverse course when important peoples' documents get saved in the cloud and they miss their shit and complain.
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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 Dude, that's horrible. Damn them, do you have backups of all that stuff which got lost?
How many things were lost? -
@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.@norad Actually, I tell a lie: I can preview the files. If I try and restore them, it tells me that "the cloud operation cannot be performed on a read-only volume" and skips them.
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@greg @planettimmy Storage Sense can also cause this
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/5386676/onedrive-keeps-deleting-files-without-permissionSo, despite the MS rep saying this "shouldn't happen under normal circumstances," there are in fact two separate and very easy paths that lead to One Drive stealing your files and then obliterating them without ever telling the user this is what it is doing.
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@prism Dude, that's horrible. Damn them, do you have backups of all that stuff which got lost?
How many things were lost?@wing_of_eternity I don't even know, but a lot of stuff. My reaper project folder, for instance, is a third of the size that it should be.
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@prism Dude, that's horrible. Damn them, do you have backups of all that stuff which got lost?
How many things were lost?@wing_of_eternity And yes I had a backup. The backup was oneDrive. Do you understand?
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@planettimmy I wish I knew! What I know is:
- Windows OOBE has you sign in with your MS account which signs you into the associated preinstalled services
- The default shortcut location for documents was in OneDrive, not my local folder.
- At some point I did a decleaning of my Windows (probably Tron or the AI debloater tool or something like that) which removed my OneDrive.
- At some point, my files had been set to online only. I do not know why. Maybe it is an MS default, maybe it was StorageSense. I have no recollection.
- Six months (or whenever) later, I get emails from Microsoft, telling me I will lose access to the files in my onedrive storage if I don't sign in. I ignore them, because I never "used" that storage anyway and thought I still had the local copies.
- Some time later I go to one of these files, which is still listed as present on my hard drive, with file properties in tact, only to discover that it no longer opens. I sign into OneDrive and my storage is at 0% (now 95% because the first thing it did was start re-uploading my current documents folder a second time.)@prism @planettimmy I've nearly run into this as well but averted it:
* MS gives you limited online storage (say, 5gb) in OneDrive
* If you run over that limit, by just naturally saving things to Documents, it'll complain that it's no longer syncing until you delete stuff or pay up for more cloud
* If you STILL ignore their warnings, MS will email you warnings that they're going to delete your files unless you sync again (see above)
* (at this point I did move things to my regular ass hard drive which unblocked syncing and made the scary emails stop)so even users not using a debloat tool etc. can still trip the issue you had. It's not at all clear to users that just filling up storage (which many don't even care about!) can lead to the destructive combo of "some of your files are cloud-only now" + "and we're deleting your cloud-only files"
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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 I imagine Linux / BSD is a nightmarish hellscape for accessibility of that sort -- especially given the various distros in use. I'm guessing, though evidently it's not as capable in this area as Windows, macOS would be much closer to not terrible than Linux ever will be.
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@wing_of_eternity I don't even know, but a lot of stuff. My reaper project folder, for instance, is a third of the size that it should be.
@prism I wonder how is it you didn't lose all, literally, all, even so the loss is great as fuck. Damn OneDrive, and its stuff, I would want to remove it from my system entirely. Not using yet Windows 11, but after what I'm hearing, it sounds like a bad idea to try.
Where did you have the files which survived, though? -
@kimcrawley @prism I imagine Linux / BSD is a nightmarish hellscape for accessibility of that sort -- especially given the various distros in use. I'm guessing, though evidently it's not as capable in this area as Windows, macOS would be much closer to not terrible than Linux ever will be.
@blakespot @kimcrawley Voiceover doesn't work well for me and there is no alternative. Also Apple likes the iCloud upsell almost as much as Microsoft. I can't tell you the number of times me or my sister have had to explain to my dad that, just because Apple sent him an email telling him he needs to pay for more iCloud space, he doesn't actually need to do it. Apple is not the solution here.
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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 my wife lost her dissertation to this type of onedrive fuckery a while back. awful anti-pattern.
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@prism I wonder how is it you didn't lose all, literally, all, even so the loss is great as fuck. Damn OneDrive, and its stuff, I would want to remove it from my system entirely. Not using yet Windows 11, but after what I'm hearing, it sounds like a bad idea to try.
Where did you have the files which survived, though?@wing_of_eternity Because it stops backing up after 5GB's. That's precisely the amount missing.
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@prism my wife lost her dissertation to this type of onedrive fuckery a while back. awful anti-pattern.
@gsuberland God. That's awful. I'm so sorry.
