Taking Control of OneDrive?

Edwin · 2026-08-17T16:24:18-0400

In the video, Leo goes into great detail about mirroring...,
he also goes into great detail about moving..., what's it gonna be, mirroring or moving?

My definition of a backup is to make a COPY of an item and store elsewhere, NOT move it!!!
It ain't rocket science, folks!!!

TraderGary · 2026-08-17T16:32:06-0400

pparks1 said:
But they didn't lose data, they just lost the copy of the file that was on their local drive. Unless they didn't have any idea to go to the cloud copy and simply download it back to their local machines. The online only copies of the files will still be nestled in the cloud.

Correct.

Data loss occurs when people don't understand what's happening, decide that the problem is with cloud OneDrive, and decide to just get rid of everything that's in the cloud. They don't understand that OneDrive's only purpose is to keep data locally and, in the cloud, in real-time sync. Now the data is deleted everywhere! Sadly, they also don't know that OneDrive has a cloud Recycle Bin where deleted files are kept for 30 days and still could have been restored.

People don't understand how OneDrive works. People don't understand what Microsoft Backup has done. And people don't know how to fix it.

And as @Bree says, the recent "fix" doesn't go far enough, nor does it fully explain what's happened.

And as @Edwin says, OneDrive is NOT a backup!

It's a mess that never should have happened.

Edwin · 2026-08-17T16:41:13-0400

TraderGary said:
It's a mess that never should have happened.

MS is probably too embarrassed to fess up to it! Either that or, they're too arrogant to give a sh*t about user's travails!

pparks1 · 2026-08-17T16:47:28-0400

Edwin said:
In the video, Leo goes into great detail about mirroring...,
he also goes into great detail about moving..., what's it gonna be, mirroring or moving?

It's both.

They moved the files from C:\users\user1\Documents to C:\users\user1\OneDrive\Documents. That would be better than having the local files in 2 places. That would have caused even more confusion.

They mirror the files between C:\users\user1\OneDrive\Documents to the OneDrive cloud.

Marcus Vinicus · 2026-08-17T16:49:17-0400

Edwin said:
MS is probably too embarrassed to fess up to it! Either that or, they're too arrogant to give a sh*t about user's travails!

Going by the number of issues MS currently has with bugs and vulnerabilities in Windows OneDrive is probably the least of their worries.

AI finds so many Windows flaws, Microsoft can’t keep up. Should you worry?

In short, yes — the arrival of AI has sped up the timeline between bug finding and exploits. And Microsoft isn’t immune.

www.computerworld.com

pparks1 · 2026-08-17T16:52:55-0400

TraderGary said:
And as @Edwin says, OneDrive is NOT a backup!

It's more of a backup then people who don't take any backup. I still view it as a "backup". It's in a secondary location and it has revision history. If I delete it, and I don't notice the deletion for 30 days, then yeah, I'm going to lose it.....so it's not a perfect point in time backup.....

But if your local hard drive dies, and you lose absolutely everything, i bet when you get a new machine and reconnect to OneDrive, you are happy you had a secondary backup copy of your data.

Semantics, I know.

Edwin · 2026-08-17T17:04:20-0400

pparks1 said:
That would be better than having the local files in 2 places. That would have caused even more confusion.

Not to me it doesn't!
You can mirror my files, as in MAKE COPIES, to the cloud via whatever folder you designate..., just don't feck with my originals!!!
I know what they are, I know where they are..., leave 'em alone!!!

TraderGary · 2026-08-17T17:17:50-0400

pparks1 said:
It's more of a backup then people who don't take any backup. I still view it as a "backup". It's in a secondary location and it has revision history. If I delete it, and I don't notice the deletion for 30 days, then yeah, I'm going to lose it.....so it's not a perfect point in time backup.....

But if your local hard drive dies, and you lose absolutely everything, i bet when you get a new machine and reconnect to OneDrive, you are happy you had a secondary backup copy of your data.

Semantics, I know.

I agree.

For me OneDrive is the offsite data component of my 3-2-1 Backup Strategy. My main backups are my daily Macrium Reflect X complete drive images that contain everything, not just my data.

gunrunnerjohn · 2026-08-17T17:19:28-0400

Bree said:
That looks to be an improvement for 25H2, but it doesn't go far enough.

They lost data because they didn't read the small print. It should be a warning in big red letters like this....

Only on my PC
Files will be in the Pictures folder on this PC and not in OneDrive.
Online-only files can't be moved. Download them first.
Learn how

....better still - when you click Continue it should check if any files are online-only, and offer to download them all for you!

No, it should be like this!

Online-only files can't be moved. Download them first!!!

pparks1 · 2026-08-17T17:35:53-0400

Edwin said:
Not to me it doesn't!
You can mirror my files, as in MAKE COPIES, to the cloud via whatever folder you designate..., just don't feck with my originals!!!
I know what they are, I know where they are..., leave 'em alone!!!

So, you are saying that if you turned on Microsoft Backup, you would want Windows to
1). Leave all of your originals in C:\users\user1\Documents
2). Copy everything from C:\users\user1\Documents to C:\users\user1\OneDrive\Documents, thus making duplicates of each file
3). Sync your files from C:\users\user1\OneDrive\Documents to the cloud.

Wouldn't that be confusing for people if they found the same files in C:\users\user1\Documents and C:\users\user1\OneDrive\Documents.....what if they saved some updates in 1 folder and some in the other? That seems like it would be way more confusing.

Edwin · 2026-08-17T18:23:36-0400

pparks1 said:
So, you are saying that if you turned on Microsoft Backup, you would want Windows to
1). Leave all of your originals in C:\users\user1\Documents
2). Copy everything from C:\users\user1\Documents to C:\users\user1\OneDrive\Documents, thus making duplicates of each file
3). Sync your files from C:\users\user1\OneDrive\Documents to the cloud.

In a certain fashion, Yes!
That way, if I decided to do something stupid like nuke OneDrive, or delete my entire MS account, I wouldn't be screwed!

pparks1 · 2026-08-17T18:27:00-0400

Edwin said:
In a certain fashion, Yes!
That way, if I decided to do something stupid like nuke OneDrive, or delete my entire MS account, I wouldn't be screwed!

Fair enough.

Like anything else, you can never make all the people happy. Some will like it, others will despise it. Others will falls somewhere in the middle.

I've always managed what's in my OneDrive manually. I don't use the Documents, Pictures, and Music folders provided by Microsoft. I'm also on a local account on my machine and have configured OneDrive myself. I think this setup has just given me a better experience.

nuspieds · 2026-08-17T20:14:44-0400

TraderGary said:
I get it too. If you watched my earlier Ask Leo video, you know why you should NOT click Continue!

Exactly!

Same here: I get these types of prompts via the system tray popups and in the Windows settings page. I simply just "X" out of/close them and move on.

nuspieds · 2026-08-17T20:30:11-0400

gunrunnerjohn said:
I realize that, but the whole point of their apparent backup zeal is to try to sell OneDrive! My take is anything a company is pushing that hard needs to be considered carefully as there's usually a selfish reason for the push.

I don't even think it is a question of a hard (or soft) push; as long as it is something that you are going to pay for or they are baiting you into paying for by offering you an initial/introductory fee, then it always is selfish on their part and you need to thoughtfully review and consider before accepting the so-called deal.

Again, to be fair, Microsoft is not the only party guilty of (aggressively) offering you an initial small/impractical amount of cloud storage for free in the hopes that you then request more storage and become a subscription customer.

nuspieds · 2026-08-17T20:38:14-0400

pparks1 said:
To be fair though, if they are going to offer a backup option that everybody can use, where else are they gonna put it? Not everybody has an external drive, or NAS or flash drive attached. A good backup copy of your data should really be offsite. My sister's house burned down...local backups there didnt help.

But to be fair, though, it is really about them getting additional revenue from online storage subscriptions.

5 GB free? Seriously, in this day and age, for how many people is that storage space more than sufficient?

Again, I'm not specifically knocking Microsoft here because its competitors are doing the exact same thing: Bait you in with some small/ridiculous/impractical amount of initial free storage space so that you then eventually select more storage and become a paying subscriber.

TraderGary · 2026-08-17T21:05:04-0400

nuspieds said:
But to be fair, though, it is really about them getting additional revenue from online storage subscriptions.

5 GB free? Seriously, in this day and age, for how many people is that storage space more than sufficient?

Again, I'm not specifically knocking Microsoft here because its competitors are doing the exact same thing: Bait you in with some small/ridiculous/impractical amount of initial free storage space so that you then eventually select more storage and become a paying subscriber.

Net result for me? I'm a more than happy Microsoft 365 subscriber with always up to date Microsoft Office and 1 Terabyte of OneDrive! All this for me and 6 other family members, each with their own Office and 1 TB of OneDrive, for only $99/year! :hug:

nuspieds · 2026-08-17T21:15:02-0400

TraderGary said:
Yes, it's certainly true that companies are in business to make a profit. Products must have value or the product fails. In this case the product, OneDrive, has value, as demonstrated by longevity of close to 20 years and the large number of OneDrive users.

The bottom line for this thread is that the introduction of the Microsoft Backup Feature in 2023 was not very well thought out, causes mass confusion, and even data loss. The damage that Microsoft has done to OneDrive with this "feature" must be explained, understood, and fixed.

Agreed, but I think a lot of tech companies have become addicted to the subscription model and, with respects to OneDrive, Microsoft (and its competitors) are all about trying to drive you to become a paid subscriber for more storage space. Look at how many apps have or are being transitioned to the subscription model.

When you look at the potential new revenue, you can see how a company can easily muddy the waters and cause confusion with their other products, because they are so focused on realizing the new revenue stream. As an example, I am baffled as to how a feature like Point-In-Time-Restore is released and marketed/communicated as if it were like the feature to change your desktop background image.

pparks1 · 2026-08-17T21:28:38-0400

nuspieds said:
But to be fair, though, it is really about them getting additional revenue from online storage subscriptions.

5 GB free? Seriously, in this day and age, for how many people is that storage space more than sufficient?

Again, I'm not specifically knocking Microsoft here because its competitors are doing the exact same thing: Bait you in with some small/ridiculous/impractical amount of initial free storage space so that you then eventually select more storage and become a paying subscriber.

Sure, they want to generate revenue. Obviously there is going to be a relatively small amount of disk space given away for free. iCloud is 5GB free, Dropbox is 2GB free, Google drive is one of the best at 15GB of free space with Google Drive.

I think the key difference is that Microsoft provides something else of pretty solid value for paying for more storage space. Unlike the other vendors, you get the full Microsoft Office Suite. It's basically the pro version of Office too....not just the small home and student version. You get Mac and Windows versions. You can install on whatever you like. You can share your subscription with 6 people (if you buy the family account), and the primary sub holder gets the premium copilot features.

All in all, you get a whole lot for basically less money than any other provider charges you for far less storage. 6TB with Apple is $30 a month. or $360 a year. 2TB of Google drive is $9.99 a month. 2TB with OneDrive is $9.99 a year.

Marie SWE · 2026-08-17T22:07:54-0400

To prevent onedrive (take control) so it cant start syncing without the users knowledge even with an evil update that enables it.. or a repair install enables it ..or your evil friend enables it...... In the firewall block the domains onedrive.com and... *.files.1drv.com
and you just killed onedrive
Edit: My first rule of evil systems that not always "stay put" under all circumstances... block the unwanted domains..

nuspieds · 2026-08-17T22:26:07-0400

TraderGary said:
Net result for me? I'm a more than happy Microsoft 365 subscriber with always up to date Microsoft Office and 1 Terabyte of OneDrive! All this for me and 6 other family members, each with their own Office and 1 TB of OneDrive, for only $99/year!

You may recall that I, too, use OneDrive for my offsite storage for my 3-2-1 backup strategy. I originally started with AWS, then switched to GCP, then switched to OneDrive--all for economic reasons! With GCP, at most I was paying $2/month for their cheapest storage and although not a bank-breaker, when I got the Microsoft 365 Enterprise/1 TB OneDrive storage included as part of my ISP plan, well, it was a no-brainer to switch to OneDrive.

That being said, if that ISP plan were to disappear today, the reason I would still look favorably at a Microsoft 365 plan is because of the seamless integration of OneDrive into Windows. Again, not because I'm biased for Microsoft, but because I've used AWS, GCP, and OneDrive; and, for my use case, OneDrive was--by far--the best.

Taking Control of OneDrive?

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