onedrive

After what happened to me I WOULD>

pparks1 said:

It's not really a silly feature. They enable that feature because people started getting laptops and such that have relatively small SSD's and if you have a 1TB OneDrive folder (because you bought Office 365), and if you had something like 200GB of stuff in your OneDrive account, you might not actually want that consuming all of that space on your SSD. This puts trust into Microsoft that they backup their environment and safeguard your data. I think for many people, having it in the cloud is safer than local as lot's of people aren't enthusiasts like we are and they don't take the time to backup their stuff....sad but true.

I know that I have Files on Demand enabled. I have about 70GB of stuff in OneDrive, and when I built my new computer in December of 2020, I didn't feel like downloading all of that data onto my 2TB WD SN850 PCIe Gen 4 NVMe drive. I am considering getting another basic SSD drive to be a dedicated drive for keeping my onedrive data....and thus having it both local and in the cloud (effectively turning off files on demand), but I haven't done it yet.

There is one thing that caught me a little by surprise with OneDrive, and I figure I will mention it here.

Let's say that i have a box setup, and I have the files on OneDrive and my Hard Drive. Let's assume that I use Macrium and take regular backups. So, I have month end backups from the previous 2 months.

• April 2020 month end
• May 2020 month end

On June 1st, let's say that I create 3 folders,

• folder1, with file1.txt, and file2.txt inside of it.
• folder2, with file3.txt, and file4.txt inside of it.
• folder3with file5.txt, and file6.txt inside of it.

it's now June 7th, and the above 3 folders and associated 6 files are both in the cloud and on my PC. I install a Windows update, my system gets all wonky and I decide that I am simply going to restore my month end May backup from Macrium.

When my restore completes, it will put OneDrive back to the way it was on May 2021 month end. This means that the 3 folders and 6 files are now NO longer on my PC....but they are still in the cloud (RIGHT?). Well, when OneDrive sees my PC come back online and folders1,2,3 are not there, and files 1-6 are not there either, it assumes I deleted them from my hard drive, thus it removes them from the cloud too (Well, it puts it into the cloud recycle bin...so nothing is actually lost yet.). So, if I don't catch that this happened, and I wipe my cloud recycle bin ......well my files are gone from both my desktop and the cloud....and thus I would have to bring them back from a stand alone backup. (assuming that I had one)

The way I work around the above issue, is that I intentionally unlink my OneDrive right before I pull my backup with Macrium. I then take my image without OneDrive enabled. Therefore, if I restore that backup, on first bootup my connection One Drive is disconnected. When I sign it, it will restablish the OneDrive connection and when my system comes online, OneDrive still shows me Folders1,2,3 with files 1-6 in the cloud and it doesn't remove them in the cloud.

NMI said:

Files On-Demand is not enabled by default.

TairikuOkami said:

It always was for me, even after a clean install. It actually made me to loose month's work.

After some further research, it appears to me that Microsoft did start enabling Files On-Demand by default on both Windows and Mac sometime within the last couple of years. It wasn't the default when I started using it, but I apologize for the contradiction.

What a palarva, how do none teck people sort this my dad who is 86 would not know how to do this Now i understand why He keeps asking me were his finacial and corrispondance letters keep disapearing.
Sorry about spelling been upgrading my gaming rig and i am knackered. rest till tomoz.
regards .

pparks1 said:

There is one thing that caught me a little by surprise with OneDrive, and I figure I will mention it here.

Let's say that i have a box setup, and I have the files on OneDrive and my Hard Drive. Let's assume that I use Macrium and take regular backups. So, I have month end backups from the previous 2 months.

• April 2020 month end
• May 2020 month end

On June 1st, let's say that I create 3 folders,

• folder1, with file1.txt, and file2.txt inside of it.
• folder2, with file3.txt, and file4.txt inside of it.
• folder3with file5.txt, and file6.txt inside of it.

it's now June 7th, and the above 3 folders and associated 6 files are both in the cloud and on my PC. I install a Windows update, my system gets all wonky and I decide that I am simply going to restore my month end May backup from Macrium.

When my restore completes, it will put OneDrive back to the way it was on May 2021 month end. This means that the 3 folders and 6 files are now NO longer on my PC....but they are still in the cloud (RIGHT?). Well, when OneDrive sees my PC come back online and folders1,2,3 are not there, and files 1-6 are not there either, it assumes I deleted them from my hard drive, thus it removes them from the cloud too (Well, it puts it into the cloud recycle bin...so nothing is actually lost yet.). So, if I don't catch that this happened, and I wipe my cloud recycle bin ......well my files are gone from both my desktop and the cloud....and thus I would have to bring them back from a stand alone backup. (assuming that I had one)

The way I work around the above issue, is that I intentionally unlink my OneDrive right before I pull my backup with Macrium. I then take my image without OneDrive enabled. Therefore, if I restore that backup, on first bootup my connection One Drive is disconnected. When I sign it, it will restablish the OneDrive connection and when my system comes online, OneDrive still shows me Folders1,2,3 with files 1-6 in the cloud and it doesn't remove them in the cloud.

toppergraph said:

What a palarva, how do none teck people sort this my dad who is 86 would not know how to do this Now i understand why He keeps asking me were his finacial and corrispondance letters keep disapearing.

Non-technical people use their computers very differently than us enthusiasts. For example, they likely aren't using imaging applications like Macrium to make backups of their computers on a regular basis. And in the event that they are making backups, I bet most aren't restoring them regularly. Therefore, the example that I provided is far more unlikely to bite them in the butt.

As a non-techie person, I think honestly that cloud storage solutions like OneDrive are actually good.

Non techies generally turn on their computers, and just use them on a daily basis. Many don't think about backups, and make the assumption that their computer will simply turn on everyday and they will always have their files. In this case, "If" they are saving their files to OneDrive, on the day that their hard drive fails their files will still be available via the copy in the cloud. Once they get a new hard drive, or computer and set it up, their files will magically become available to them once again.

I think for a non techie - keep it simple. So don't use One Drive Or anything you don't manually do yourself. Backing up personal files regularly is important and even a non techie should be able to do that - copying and pasting to an external hard drive. Then at least they can do a manufacturer reset to factory settings and reinstall files and updates, even if no system image.

My parents wouldn't even reset to factory settings without calling a technician to do it. I would offer but they would only trust a qualified technician lol.

It used to worry me stupid that they did all their banking online, not very good passwords and relied on out of date free antivirus. I am sure free antivirus programs are good but for online banking it needs to have good reputation (and have the updates done and not be out of date!). My Dad did online banking for a few years with a browser hijacker installed he couldn't get rid of. But still wouldn't let me clean install his PC! He switched to Apple Mac instead - that did his head in as he never could get to grips with how everything worked (Windows much more intuitive).

Hazel123 said:

I think for a non techie - keep it simple. So don't use One Drive Or anything you don't manually do yourself. Backing up personal files regularly is important and even a non techie should be able to do that - copying and pasting to an external hard drive

I agree that backing up files is not very hard. And copying and pasting to an external hard drive is really easy.

However, are they going to be diligent about backing up? Are they going to backup every time they update a file? If they are only backing up say monthly or weekly...are they willing to lose the data in the event of a disaster since their last backup. Also, I keep my backups on 2 external drives, and I keep one offsite. My sisters house actually burned down, so a copy on a single external hard drive right next to the computer doesn't do much good.

The above is a reason why using the cloud can be advantageous. A secondary copy is only delayed by the upload speed of your internet. And version history is available too in the event that a file overwrite was performed that was unintentional.

Hazel123 said:

It used to worry me stupid that they did all their banking online, not very good passwords and relied on out of date free antivirus. I am sure free antivirus programs are good but for online banking it needs to have good reputation (and have the updates done and not be out of date!). My Dad did online banking for a few years with a browser hijacker installed he couldn't get rid of. But still wouldn't let me clean install his PC! He switched to Apple Mac instead - that did his head in as he never could get to grips with how everything worked (Windows much more intuitive).

I can certainly understand your concern about online banking. While I'm fine with online banking as a whole, I think that there are risks and you gotta know the signs to watch out for.

I have grown up with PC's my whole life. Started with Commodore Vic 20's and 64's. Moved to an 8086 IBM XT clone running DOS 5. Have used all flavors of Windows since 2.0. I work in IT and support Windows Servers and Linux servers, as well as cloud computing. Back in 2014, for fun and to be a learning experience I bought my first Apple MacBook Pro. It's been a solid laptop, but honestly, I don't find Apple stuff to be very intuitive. I have a choice at work to be WIndows or Mac and I choose Windows. Just much more comfortable with troubleshooting problems in the Windows arena versus a Mac.

toppergraph said:

All i can see is there are more negative reasons to use it replies, Nuff said .
Good idea but it is not there yet like most MS stuff.

Fair enough, it's a choice and it's up to the person to decide if it's useful to them.

I've used Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive for years and they all work pretty much the same. I primarily use OneDrive now as I paid for Office 365 and I get terabytes of space with my subscription.

I think it personally works very well for my usage. Haven't had any problems, or loss of data because of it. And for the $99 I pay for Office 365, it's a no-brainer with the amount of OneDrive space I get. Just the secondary copy of all pictures and videos from my families cell phones make this a win-win for me.