Backup - OneDrive Issues

pparks1 said:

Never have problems or make mistakes with it.

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The problem is that onedrive turned into ransomware lately. MS hijacks your files and asks you to buy more space or else! If you uninstall onedrive, your files are lost, if you panic (half forcefully removed and stored online). I did panic, I uninstalled onedrive and removed personal files from onedrive, not knowing that MS removed them locally already, so I lost several months of work.

TairikuOkami said:

The problem is that onedrive turned into ransomware lately. MS hijacks your files and asks you to buy more space or else! If you uninstall onedrive, your files are lost, if you panic (half forcefully removed and stored online). I did panic, I uninstalled onedrive and removed personal files from onedrive, not knowing that MS removed them locally already, so I lost several months of work.

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Rubbish, no-one hijacks your files. They would only be removed locally if you selected the 'Files on demand' feature or right-click on a folder/file and select 'Free up Space'. If you lost files and several months of work that's down to your own incompetence and lack of understanding as to how things work. I use OneDrive extensively and despite reinstalling Windows multiple times I have NEVER lost a file that has been on OneDrive.

TairikuOkami said:

The problem is that onedrive turned into ransomware lately. MS hijacks your files and asks you to buy more space or else! If you uninstall onedrive, your files are lost, if you panic (half forcefully removed and stored online). I did panic, I uninstalled onedrive and removed personal files from onedrive, not knowing that MS removed them locally already, so I lost several months of work.

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Even if you did uninstall OneDrive, and then nuked all of your files locally....they would still be in the cloud, no?

markw51 said:

. I use OneDrive extensively and despite reinstalling Windows multiple times I have NEVER lost a file that has been on OneDrive.

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Right......I put files on OneDrive just to ensure that they aren't on one machine. No matter what I do, they are always safe online in the event my local copy disappears.

To all of you who understand, are experienced in, want, and like onedrive, I commend you. Good for you. But you are not the norm.

No member here has the right to insinuate anyone is incompetent. The people who come to this forum represent most of the general public. THEY are the norm. Many, many users do not understand Onedrive, do not want it, and don't know how to prevent problems arising from it. They have a perfect right to disagree that Onedrive is for them.

For folks who end up in situations like @TairikuOkami I fully sympathize. I understand whole heartedly where you are coming from.

glasskuter said:

To all of you who understand, are experienced in, want, and like onedrive, I commend you. Good for you. But you are not the norm.

No member here has the right to insinuate anyone is incompetent. The people who come to this forum represent most of the general public. THEY are the norm. Many, many users do not understand Onedrive, do not want it, and don't know how to prevent problems arising from it. They have a perfect right to disagree that Onedrive is for them.

For folks who end up in situations like @TairikuOkami I fully sympathize. I understand whole heartedly where you are coming from.

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I agree that people are fully entitled to whatever opinion they have. What i find with "the cloud" is that for many it's just trendy to scoff at it's use.

So, to counter the above argument, while many might be confused about OneDrive or not sure they want it, it's often just because it's different than the norm. You need people who do use it, appreciate it, and can guide them along in their journey if they ultimately decide maybe it works for them.

For @TairikuOkami, while I can sympathize that they experienced a problem, I cannot understand how uninstalling OneDrive from their computer caused them to lose files. Without a more specific example of a bug in OneDrive, I think this boiled down to simple end-user error or confusion. I think it would be better here to discuss it and try to find out where this went off the rails, rather than just say, "well person 1 lost some data, so it's universally bad and should be avoided at all cost".

That's what forums are great for. We all have different levels of experience. And we can all share and discuss. I have 25+ years of managing enterprise Windows and Linux servers, massive virtual machine farms, and cloud infrastructure (Office 365, AWS, etc).

glasskuter said:

To all of you who understand, are experienced in, want, and like onedrive, I commend you. Good for you. But you are not the norm.

No member here has the right to insinuate anyone is incompetent. The people who come to this forum represent most of the general public. THEY are the norm. Many, many users do not understand Onedrive, do not want it, and don't know how to prevent problems arising from it. They have a perfect right to disagree that Onedrive is for them.

For folks who end up in situations like @TairikuOkami I fully sympathize. I understand whole heartedly where you are coming from.

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Actually, I know lots of people who use it with no issues. It is really simple - uninstall it if you really do not want it.

I have tried all the other main Cloud players, and they are not a patch on onedrive.

I think the biggest issue of many users on this site, they do not understand the concept of RTFM and get in a pickle as a result.

In simple terms, learn the basics of onedrive, and when proficient, move to more advanced skills.

The most important thing is not to listen to the tedious persons whose hatred is more based in irrational aspects MS is out to screw us, harvest our data, I do not believe it is secure blah blah blah.

cereberus said:

the concept of RTFM

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I do totally agree with that and sometimes want to yell "RTFM". But in an open forum, instructions often times are subjective and not what a user wants to do, whether it be from lack of understanding or inexperience. Unknowingly, they follow given advice anyway and as you say, get into a pickle.

As an example, your above statement It is really simple - uninstall it if you really do not want it.
You would know that's not quite all there is to it. Someone else would take it literally as written and along comes one of those pickles.

Even in Brink's tutorials, which are always precisely written and accurate, a user can get thrown by terminology. None of us are above not grasping something, no matter how much experience we have....or at least, I'm not too proud to admit that I'm not. There's a crap-ton of stuff I don't understand or have difficulty comprehending no matter how many times I read it..

I’m using idrive for backups now - rather than just rely on external drives. If I need to share a file I use Google drive. I also once lost files using One Drive and don’t want it to happen again - I prefer to have more manual control.

I was also in the habit of uninstalling it for years when using low powered netbooks and laptops to stop things getting slowed down. One drive being uninstalled made a big difference. Maybe not an issue with higher powered computers.

That is just my personal take on it and I know it works for others. I like to think I’m reasonably tech proficient but I don’t like the idea I could not know where I file is. I prefer things installed on the computer or backed up somewhere accessible (but still on the computer).

I’m not keen on the idea of 365 because a) it’s an annual fee (even if it does get updates) b) I don’t need the extra one drive storage due to above reasons. C) I see no reason to change what works and is simple. I’d rather buy Office 2021 to install for a one off fee and not be logged into my Microsoft account when using it. I’m still using Word 2013 on one computer and unless it stops working I don’t see the need to pay an annual fee or buy another copy.

I’m not anti cloud storage - I just like to know what’s where. And I do find One drive confusing - there are still a couple of files in it even though I don’t have it installed. That I didn’t choose to have there.

I found it confusing because at times it seemed to have a mind of its own and because I just don’t like the way it works.

I’m quite happy uploading something to Google drive though as it isn’t installed on the computer and doing its own thing.

pparks1 said:

I cannot understand how uninstalling OneDrive from their computer caused them to lose files.

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pparks1 said:

I think it would be better here to discuss it and try to find out where this went off the rails, rather than just say, "well person 1 lost some data, so it's universally bad and should be avoided at all cost".

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I am not the only one, from various forums, even this one, dozens of people lost files the same way I did, because onedrive is not a backup. By default it removes local files and stores them online without alerting the user, so there is no backup, backup means that files are stored at least twice and onedrive merely mirrors them. Once the user uninstalls onedrive and nukes onedrive online or gets rid of MSA, files are gone forever. Either MS did not think it through or it is by purpose, either way, it is despicable.

Onedrive is great for a quick sync, if PC gets suddenly damaged or stolen, but not for a backup.
I use MS 365, because of sync, but I prefer an offline icedrive and external disks as a sturdy backup.

This is one reason some people have issues with One Drive

This is another reason - ordinary everyday people just get a lot of hassle with it and security of files is important.

One drive is horrible, invasive ….

And another - it is not popular!

MS has proven one point, that they are all about money now, they do not allow freeloaders. Free onedrive (supported by windows backup app) also disables free outlook, if onedrive is full (5GB by default), regardless of the fact if outlook has zero emails in inbox and trash, it blocks all emails in outlook. That proves my point, onedrive is ransomware, once I paid the ransom, everything works flawlessly.

I'ma install OneDrive..., see what all the fuss is about!

Hazel123 said:

This is another reason - ordinary everyday people just get a lot of hassle with it and security of files is important.

One drive is horrible, invasive ….

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Well here's the thing (not just onedrive). People post when they get issues but people rarely post when all is fine.

Thus it is easy to get a jaundiced view of the world.

I do not have a lot of sympathy with people who fouled up in some way and lost critical data as they only backed it up there.

Any backup specialist will tell you:

Backup CRITICAL data to at least two separate places, (preferably in separate locations).

People often say they prefer to backup to their own drive but still forget the 2 place rule. A home drive can fail or get stolen.

I kind of laugh when people say "it's ok for you, you are an expert". Well here's the thing, I never had any formal IT training (other than learning FORTRAN).

Everything I have learned is by sheer dogged determination and a LOT of trial and error.

Of course, perhaps the biggest issue is many people think they should not need to learn and everything should be spoonfed to them.

This is possibly one of the key drivers behind computer aided decision making (I refuse to call it by the trendy two letter acronym) i e. it is easier to ask others for a solution rather than learning how to do things one's self.

TairikuOkami said:

I am not the only one, from various forums, even this one, dozens of people lost files the same way I did, because onedrive is not a backup. By default it removes local files and stores them online without alerting the user,

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I would not call OneDrive a backup either, it's a secondary copy. By default though, it does not remove local files. If you buy a new desktop computer, sign up for an MS account, and start using OneDrive on it, every single file you save in your C:\users\profile\OneDrive folder will by default be stored on the local C drive and will also be synchronized to the cloud. These files are in 2 places.

If on the other hand, you buy a laptop to go along with your desktop, and you sign into your laptop with your MS account, you will "see" the files that are stored only in the cloud, and by default you will have links on the local machine (aka "files on demand") where it looks like the files are on your local drive, but they are not until you use them. At that point, the file you are working on IS copied down to your local machine and is now stored in 2 places. There are multiple file icon types for these files as a visible representation. This was more of a desirable feature years ago when laptops and such had far smaller hard drives. If you had say 600GB of stuff in your OneDrive folder, and you bought a new laptop with a 512GB SSD, well you wouldn't be able to bring down all 600GB of stuff from OneDrive and store it locally on that computer without running out of disk space. So, the files on demand feature was born.

TairikuOkami said:

Once the user uninstalls onedrive and nukes onedrive online or gets rid of MSA, files are gone forever. Either MS did not think it through or it is by purpose, either way, it is despicable.

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Couple of things

#1). If I had saved work on my computer and had put it in OneDrive, I'm pretty sure before I went ahead and deleted OneDrive, I would make a secondary copy of that data on a thumb drive, external drive, network share, or at least somewhere on my C drive......you know.....just in case something went sideways.

#2). If after removing OneDrive from my desktop, I think I would discover pretty quickly if my local files were no longer on my actual computer. I'd be like...."uhhhhhh.....where did all my stuff go?". If I couldn't find them anywhere, I would panic and then hit he OneDrive website where I would find my files and folders. Then I could copy them back down.

Your described situation would mean you would have to uninstall OneDrive, let it remove all of your local files as well, then delete all of the files in the cloud, and empty the recycle bin in the cloud, and then get rid of your Microsoft account altogether. Seems like an unlikely pitfall.


I don't know..... my experience with onedrive and Office 365 has been really good. I use it at home/work, I use it on my desktop, my laptops, my macs, my linux machines, my tables, and my cell phone. As far as I can tell, i've never lost a file that I had actually saved to a onedrive location.

(The only exception being when I once restored a Macrium backup with OneDrive on it, and the system removed it from the cloud account too when it no longer saw it on my desktop....making the only assumption that it could make...that I had intentionally removed the file from the desktop and it synced that change to the cloud. The good news was that it had simply moved it into the cloud recycling bin and I since I noticed it straight away...i was able to get the file back out before it was removed by some auto cleanup task every 60 days or whatever OneDrive uses. Also good to note that it doesn't exhibit this same behavior today....newer files existing on the cloud continue to stay on the cloud and show as links on my desktop).

Edwin said:

I'ma install OneDrive..., see what all the fuss is about!

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Very strange system!
And @TairikuOkami is right, if you choose to exclude/hide folders, the existing content goes straight to the Recycle Bin! I don't get that! What's the point of doing that!?!?!?



You can't choose folders, you have to use the default folders!

When you install OneDrive, it starts syncing the default locations right away, before you can turn them off.
At least, when I installed Proton Drive, it lets me choose folders/Apply, then starts syncing.

It's definitely about the money!
I've only been fooling around with this for 20 minutes and have gotten 6 pop-ups to upgrade my storage!
In the pop-ups, they really play hard to the user's insecurities about losing their data or device!

Berton said:

I'd get an External USB HDD and back up to it. Actually, simply copying folders to it would work, it's what I do.

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I have a 4 TB Seagate USB backup drive and love it... I bought it a few years ago and it wasn't much at all. Very small and very easy to use. Has it's own software to set schedules too, but you can use any software with it. IMHO