I'm more upset than I've been in a while.
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@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?
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@sukiletxe @modulux MS will remove your files after you sign out for a certain amount of time if your storage is full. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/5949921/onedrive-restoring-deleted-files-due-to-over-stora
@prism @sukiletxe @modulux This is stupid.
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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 Fuck OneDrive. Fuck it harshly with a rusty spike. Win11 doing this by default is a perfect example of the corporation/OS thinking it knows better than the user. Newsflash, no the actual hell it doesn't. God if I do eventually have to upgrade my other machine to win11 I'm not looking forward to that being a thing. Have never used OneDrive before, and what you've talked about here makes me want to do so even less.
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@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?
@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.) -
The top take from chuds (who have presumably done nothing wrong their whole lives) is "if those files were so important, you should have backed them up."
I was backing them up. To OneDrive.
Learn to read you fucking neanderthals.
@prism sometimes the right answer is just to say "man, that sucks"
Man, that sucks. I'm sorry you're going through this.
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@librarysquirrel @altlazybear @prism They don't force an Apple ID (yet) but they do force cloud activation during the recovery/install phase. If you don't have a WiFi network, USB hotspot or ethernet bridge, you're screwed if you want to set up macOS. Lack of a network connection isn't so much the problem insomuch as Apple deciding they will no longer activate your Mac. Oh, and they activate iCloud without your consent too, so there's that. They all suck.
@jackf723 @librarysquirrel @altlazybear @prism a new out of the box Mac doesn't need Internet for setup, online activation is needed if you reinstall the OS
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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?
