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 Microsoft should be made liable for its willful destruction of user data -- user private property -- on its servers without explicit documented user permission (not terms & conditions language).
The corporation would likely stop offering a smidgen of free OneDrive storage, which would be a good thing all around.
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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.
Oh no. Thanks for the warning.
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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 have to constantly give a mini lecture to clients on why I'm now creating a local account for them and how to actually back up their files. I've had so many clients lose things due to their unknowing use of OneDrive and the vagueries of how it works in practice.
Very few actually intended to use it, understand that its being used or understand the implications. It's one of the worst "tyranny of the default" settings in all of computing.
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@prism Wait, do you mean that signing off from a given computer leads to removal of the associated files from the online storage???
@torf @prism Microsoft deletes inactive accounts after some time (6 months IIRC), while paid accounts are wiped 30 days after you stop paying.
This thing about OneDrive stopping keeping local copies bit one of my clients, too, and she lost a bunch of stuff when her company switched 365 tenants in a really stupid way.
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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.
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.
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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 The really awful thing here is that unless you have prior knowledge of OneDrive doing this, even having local backups of your whole computer won't help you, as the files aren't there for backup to back up (and if you use eg. BackBlaze, which operates on file level, they intentionally exclude OneDrive folder from their backup, as it's supposedly already backed up at Microsoft, and because they don't want to trigger downloading of files that are online-only).
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@prism Many sympathies. No solutions.
I'm still on Windows 10 and File Explorer no longer works. It tells me I must have spelled the file address wrong. I have decades of documents in folders. I can't access any of them.
This should be fixable but I'm also sick and lack the energy to even try.
@Kay The special hell for everyone working in MS's cloud division.
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@prism Wait, do you mean that signing off from a given computer leads to removal of the associated files from the online storage???
@torf When your storage is full, yes--which it always is, because us freeloading peasants only get 5GB of personal cloud storage and my documents folder is well past that.
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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.
RE: https://infosec.exchange/@jernej__s/117456253699535558
@adredish @prism You have to be careful with backups when OneDrive is involved – SyncToy should work, as would a naïve backup script, but actual backup programs likely won't help:
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@prism Wait, do you mean that signing off from a given computer leads to removal of the associated files from the online storage???
@torf There's a whole thread about it on the MS forums, they're definitely aware and will do nothing, because they are demons in human form https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/5949921/onedrive-restoring-deleted-files-due-to-over-stora
Edit: corrected link, the first was a related but actually separate method for Microsoft to delete your shit for no reason.
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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
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@prism Are you forced to use Windows?
@kimcrawley I'm blind, so, yes.
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@prism Microsoft should be made liable for its willful destruction of user data -- user private property -- on its servers without explicit documented user permission (not terms & conditions language).
The corporation would likely stop offering a smidgen of free OneDrive storage, which would be a good thing all around.
@Corb_The_Lesser 1000% like what can I even do? Sue Microsoft? Good luck, first off, but how do I even calculate the damages? They are priceless to me, and worthless to anyone else.
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@kimcrawley I'm blind, so, yes.
@prism Oh shit. There isn't good screen reading software in other operating systems?
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@prism Oh shit. There isn't good screen reading software in other operating systems?
@kimcrawley Correct.
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@kimcrawley Correct.
@prism Good to know. There's a market void for making Linux and Unix BSD distros accessible for blind users.
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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 Yeah Linux in particular is a shit show where accessibility is concerned. So much for allyship. Oh well. Maybe they'll get their act together in twenty years or something but not holding my breath for it.
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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.
Even more fun is that some installations of Windows default to enabling Bitlocker, but don't tell you that been done.
If you don't then activate OneDrive your Bitlocker recovery keys are not backed up off the PC.
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Even more fun is that some installations of Windows default to enabling Bitlocker, but don't tell you that been done.
If you don't then activate OneDrive your Bitlocker recovery keys are not backed up off the PC.
@simonzerafa OMG that's horrible! They're literally holding your data hostage for the sake of a $5/mo cloud subscription. Absolute fucking demons.
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@prism They're literally copying MacOS pathetically.
@altlazybear @prism They are not. Mac OS has other problems, but turning this sort of thing on by default is not one of them. It doesn't even force you to use an Apple ID if I am not mistaken, so if you don't use stuff from App Store you can easily set up a computer with an offline account.
For now, at least, that is. Apple is showing an interest in catching up to Microsoft in these matters it seems.
