I'm more upset than I've been in a while.
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@prism @simonzerafa BitLocker is enabled by default when installing Windows 10 and newer if the computer has a working TPM (this basically means every Windows 11 machine), however it'll remain in suspended state (meaning no key is needed to decrypt) until you log in to a Microsoft account (or AD, but that's not important here). Once you log in to Microsoft account (this applies to free accounts), your recovery key is backed up there and BitLocker is enabled, but thanks to TPM, the drive gets unlocked automatically, so you don't notice anything – until the moment Microsoft's updates break this automatic decryption, and you're welcomed with the recovery key entry at bootup (which only happened twice this year).
On Windows Home this is also the only official way to enable BitLocker, however you can do it manually by using the manage-bde.exe command-line utility (which you can also use to display your recovery key – run
manage-bde -protectors -get C:from elevated command prompt to get the recovery key, it's the long number under Password).@jernej__s @prism @simonzerafa Wow! My wife keeps getting hit with this bitlocker recovery issue every six weeks or so. And of course it's totally inaccessible since Windows isn't fully running yet. Anyway to just totally turn off bitlocker completely? Any consequences I should be aware of if I go that route other than just having less security, of course?
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@jernej__s @prism @simonzerafa Wow! My wife keeps getting hit with this bitlocker recovery issue every six weeks or so. And of course it's totally inaccessible since Windows isn't fully running yet. Anyway to just totally turn off bitlocker completely? Any consequences I should be aware of if I go that route other than just having less security, of course?
@darrell73 @jernej__s @simonzerafa That's about it. Don't have your hard drive stolen and you should be good.
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@jernej__s @prism @simonzerafa Wow! My wife keeps getting hit with this bitlocker recovery issue every six weeks or so. And of course it's totally inaccessible since Windows isn't fully running yet. Anyway to just totally turn off bitlocker completely? Any consequences I should be aware of if I go that route other than just having less security, of course?
@darrell73 @prism @simonzerafa If you're on Home, open elevated command prompt (Win+R,
cmd, Ctrl+Shift+Enter), and runmanage-bde -off C:– this'll turn off BitLocker completely and decrypt the drive (decryption happens in the background, and will pause if you turn off or restart the computer, and automatically resume when it starts again).On Pro you can also turn it off through Control Panel – search for bitlocker in Start Menu, and it should offer you BitLocker Drive Encryption, there's a Turn Off link there.
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@wing_of_eternity It's not in OneDrive and it's not in the folder. There is a shadow copy that carries indexes to the files, but it will not restore the files themselves. That's what I know so far.
@prism Interesting, I thought shadow copies should have the files too, but I don't know how windows shadow copying works.
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@prism I always used ShadowExplorer to export shadow copy data. It's a program written in .NET so it works out of the box on Windows. This is all from memory though.
@norad Thanks. Tried it and it just says "couldn't copy," doesn't say why. Too bad.
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@prism I always used ShadowExplorer to export shadow copy data. It's a program written in .NET so it works out of the box on Windows. This is all from memory though.
@norad Tried copying it to an xfat drive with the same result unfortunately.
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@BrailleScreen @prism @kimcrawley It's a lot better now, especially if you take advantage of AI to help you manage your system, make little helper software, etc. I don't know Nix yet happily daily NixOS this way and have been for 3 months. As I always put it to people who ask me why I switched, I'd rather use my own vibe coded OS rather than Microsoft's. Still loads better of an option than Windows
Shut up, clanker.
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@prism Interesting, I thought shadow copies should have the files too, but I don't know how windows shadow copying works.
@wing_of_eternity They probably did once, but they were removed from my machine months/years before they were removed from OneDrive which was also months ago. I didn't notice because, according to windows, the files are all still there, until you try and open them. All the metadat stays intact. This is what they appear to hold now, when I try and copy them it either fails or gives a weird arror about the operation being invalid for a read only volume.
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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'm really sorry to hear that. My sister fell foul of OneDrive in a similar way and I had to unpick it all for her, un-sync it, turn it off then decapitate OneDrive, drive a stake through its cold heart and bury it at the proverbial crossroads.
Its a deeply insidious piece of crap that uses dark patterns to manipulate users into using it without even knowing all the stuff they think is local is actually on OneDrive.
Once again, I'm really sorry you lost so much. -
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 Ugh. Horrible.
I thought Office refusing to auto-save (which it's done forever) unless it's saving into a OneDrive folder was bad enough.
This is worse.
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@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.@wpeckham That was an impressive amount of words, none of which answered my question.
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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 @prism
Yes, thats true. They literally hold all your stuff to ransom then make it quite opaque how to get it back. -
We're up to five, boys!
@prism I'm sorry people are such chuds. It's so easy to be smug and superiorist to someone else... Where's people's sympathy and kindness. You're sharing so people can be wise to Micro$hite's latest and perhaps be pre-warned to take our own steps.
I hate OneDrive it keeps shitting on where my work files are saved to. Despite my "save to desktop" setting in Word/Outlook - they get buried in stupid random places. Drives Me Potty. Win11 is crap & I hate it!
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@ppatel Everyone should delete one drive. Before it kills again.
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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 Damn, that sucks. Sorry for your data loss. Some of the most frustrated times of my life were when I lost files.
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@prism I'm sorry people are such chuds. It's so easy to be smug and superiorist to someone else... Where's people's sympathy and kindness. You're sharing so people can be wise to Micro$hite's latest and perhaps be pre-warned to take our own steps.
I hate OneDrive it keeps shitting on where my work files are saved to. Despite my "save to desktop" setting in Word/Outlook - they get buried in stupid random places. Drives Me Potty. Win11 is crap & I hate it!
@NatalyaD Skill issue lololol switch to linux u fxn n00b
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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?
It's the default for 'files on demand', at least on Windows 10 which is as far as I was willing to take it.
I remember having to explicitly go and tick "always keep on this device" for a number of things that I wanted at least a chance of recovering should things go wrong. Without that, OneDrive gets rid of local copies. There's probably a rule, but from the outside it is just seemingly arbitrary when it does it.
There's also a button buried in 'advanced' settings that downloads all files to local copies. But I've never used it so I don't know whether it also turns the 'always keep' flag on, or leaves one with the mistaken impression that everything now has a long-term local copy.
(Anything actually useful I find to be always under 'advanced' or in an appendix when it comes to Microsoft. This was true of MS-DOS 3, and it's still true today.)
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It's the default for 'files on demand', at least on Windows 10 which is as far as I was willing to take it.
I remember having to explicitly go and tick "always keep on this device" for a number of things that I wanted at least a chance of recovering should things go wrong. Without that, OneDrive gets rid of local copies. There's probably a rule, but from the outside it is just seemingly arbitrary when it does it.
There's also a button buried in 'advanced' settings that downloads all files to local copies. But I've never used it so I don't know whether it also turns the 'always keep' flag on, or leaves one with the mistaken impression that everything now has a long-term local copy.
(Anything actually useful I find to be always under 'advanced' or in an appendix when it comes to Microsoft. This was true of MS-DOS 3, and it's still true today.)
@JdeBP @planettimmy Yeah I tried the download all button, unfortunately this did not work as they are no longer in onedrive.
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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 found that with onedrive, it was a fucking pain in the arse. also uninstalling it is a sod, I had to do major regedit with help of chat gpt to get rid of the fucking thing.
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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.)
Trust, but verify. (Also offline (and preferably offsite) copies are good.)
The recent events in Russia (Datacentres being taken out by missiles) make me wonder just how secure the old $Dayjob is under current conditions. (Tape backups to Iron Mountain's offsite store were replaced by continuous replication between datacentres - which are probably not that secure against air attack, etc.)
Modern warfare was not considered a risk when that decision was made. 3:O(>
