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OneDrive just deleted all of my files
- nomilk 10mo agoVideo explaining the situation: https://www.tiktok.com/@jasonkpargin/video/7591592052954025246 https://www.tiktok.com/@jasonkpargin/video/75915920529540252... For context, Jason Pargin is an American novelist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Pargin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Pargin
- itopaloglu83 10mo agoDeleting his life’s work, his imagination, extension of his brain and all the rest. He’s not wrong to say all of those.
- the_snooze 10mo agoThe level of entitlement and irresponsibility tech companies (especially the largest and most well-resourced ones) is just astounding. You'd think that proper engineering requires some degree of care and stewardship, but these aren't engineering organizations, they're toddlers.
- gruez 10mo ago>https://www.tiktok.com/@jasonkpargin/video/75915920529540252 https://www.tiktok.com/@jasonkpargin/video/75915920529540252... That video is really confusing. It makes a few claims: 1. turning off onedrive backup deletes local files from your computer 2. there's no way delete files on onedrive without jumping through a bunch of hoops or losing your local copy 3. onedrive sucks because the file is only temporarily kept locally, and if for whatever reason it gets corrupted on microsoft servers, you're out of luck. Is there confirmation for #1? That's really the only point that seems relevant to the claim of "onedrive just deleted my files", but I'm skeptical that onedrive is that bad, and the fact that he brought up the other two points (#2 specifically) makes me think what might have happened was that he deleted files on onedrive to free up space on his microsoft account, not knowing that it would also delete the local copy. The latter is still bad, but is at least somewhat defensible because that's how services like dropbox work. Also, if it's really #2, shouldn't the files be recoverable because onedrive has a recycle bin?
- tacticus 10mo ago1 is a well known issue with onedrive. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/3863319/turning-off-onedrive-backup-for-a-folder-deletes-a https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/3863319/... > onedrive is that bad guess what. Onedrive is that bad. this is far from the first situation i've seen with this pattern. the microslop devs are doing great work pushing people off windows.
- tim333 10mo agoSo it seems the issue is "OnDemand" was turned on which is supposed to keep the files in the cloud only, but presumably some users didn't realise that? I'm out of touch with this stuff - I dropped Windows after Windows 7.
- hulitu 9mo ago> So it seems the issue is "OnDemand" was turned on which is supposed to keep the files in the cloud only, but presumably some users didn't realise that? Have you seen the wonderful, extensive Microsoft help system ? Neither do I. /s OneDrive gets installed with some default settings (which might change with every update) and starts syphoning user files to Microsoft servers.
- benterix 10mo agoOK, but this is possible only if you give in and create a Microsoft account, right? If you don't do it and only use a local account, they will be unable to do any of these shenanigans because they will have no account to upload the files to, right?
- mindcrash 10mo agoWindows 11 is forcing you to create and sign into a Microsoft Account, which will also pretty much auto enable all cloud based services connected to that account if you are not careful enough and/or do not really understand what you are doing (= someone without any IT experience).
- ReptileMan 10mo agoThe year of the linux desktop is coming. Not because it is good, but because windows is hell bent on turning into complete garbage.
- fortyseven 10mo agoWell... little of A, a lot of B...
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- throw20251220 10mo agoLawsuit is the only way forward. Then switch to linux or mac.
- blibble 10mo agomy OneDrive is much better than that weekly it selects a directory at random, deletes the entire contents, then puts a 0 byte file with the same name in its place
- hulitu 10mo agoThis is Microsoft Disk Clean Up. It is a feature in Windows since Windows 98. Handle with care. /s
- 9x39 10mo agoI think I get why Microslop tried to do this - being opinionated about the 'true' source of the files allows them to dumb down problems like "which version is the real one" for users and drop conflict resolution UIs, which I think nontechnical people interpret as hostage situations as well. It's not uncommon to see sync disasters - two structures, one local, one remote, and the user has scattershot changes throughout both without consideration for which structure they were using. Over in Mac land, iCloud still tries to handle conflict resolution sanely, but there's always going to be a sharp edge to cut yourself with anytime you sync files. It may just be unsolvable for users who don't want to be opinionated and maintain a mental model of how syncing works. Is it sync? Is it a backup? It doesn't matter so long as you understand which one, but that's hard to square with computing being something for everyone, it's simply a bridge too far for many users who don't want to bother or cannot understand.
- cwillu 10mo agoIf you don't know how to safely provide a feature, you shouldn't be making it easy to turn on the feature, if you provide it at all. There's no law of the universe that required them to solve this.
- hulitu 10mo ago> If you don't know how to safely provide a feature, you shouldn't be making it easy to turn on the feature, I guess the name "Microsoft" doesn't says anything to you. /s
- btown 10mo agoWe’ve had a solution for decades, for conflict resolution to ensure data is never lost to a misconfigured merge - it’s called a filesystem! Put a copy of anything pre-deletion into an archive that’s relatively hidden from view, but have a line of documentation saying: if something appears deleted, fear not, see this dot-prefixed backup. The fact that Microsoft has stepped backwards from this is an intentional choice and should be criticized as such.
- 10mo ago
- CqtGLRGcukpy 10mo agoFor those who don't have a Twitter / X account and want to view the posts: https://xcancel.com/jasonkpargin/status/2007659047663874120 https://xcancel.com/jasonkpargin/status/2007659047663874120
- hurfdurf 10mo agoThat xeet can be used as a rough draft for "Files in the Cloud", the sequel to "Snakes on a Plane".
- effnorwood 10mo agoWhich is why you need twodrive and threedrive
- cozzyd 10mo agoI always assumed it was zero-indexed
- j1elo 10mo agoThat's a whole lot of people being jerks and victim-blaming. He was deceived by a supposedly reputable company into trusting and using a product that in reality offers nothing more than amateurish levels of reliability.
- nipperkinfeet 10mo agoThat's horrible! I've heard similar horror stories about other cloud synchronization software. Lesson learned. I don't trust the cloud, and to rent someone else's server. I create my own local backups and don't rely on anyone else. I've been doing the same thing for over 26 years and have never lost anything.
- optionalsquid 10mo agoUsing cloud services, in addition to local backups, is an easy way to guard against events that could damage both your PC and your local backups. Such as fire, flooding, electrical failures, or theft
- nomilk 10mo ago> Using cloud services, in addition to local backups That's exactly what he had - it didn't safeguard against file loss, but caused it.
- optionalsquid 10mo agoBut local solutions can also cause file loss, if you don’t know how to use them correctly. For example, rsync and rclone will happily overwrite/delete your files if you mess up the argument order. The problem with OneDrive is not that it is cloud-based, but rather that its design is somewhere between baffling and intentionally user-hostile
- nomilk 10mo agoYeah, exactly. The vast majority of the time having a backup saves you. Microsoft just managed to make a product so bad it harms users. It's like if you installed a smoke alarm, only for it to short circuit and start a fire. In these cases, the "protection" is the cause of the harm. Bafflingly bad.
- concinds 10mo agoOnly because he didn’t understand how “syncing” works, and deleted the files in the cloud which deleted them off his computer. The “file loss” was pure user error.
- wilg 10mo agoWhat happened here? Does OneDrive work differently from Google Drive, iCloud Drive, Box, or Dropbox? Is this just a misunderstanding?
- nomilk 10mo agoHe did not want nor opt-in to OneDrive. One day, 20 years of his files appeared on OneDrive. He was annoyed that Microsoft had uploaded his files into the cloud without his permission. He did not want his files in OneDrive so he went into OneDrive and deleted them. Doing so removed his files from OneDrive, but, to his despair, also deleted the files from his computer (he lost 20 years of work, files, personal records etc). He writes for a living so presumably his files are of considerable importance to him. His rage is quite palpable (from the second tweet in the thread): > Whoever designed and pushed this literally deserves pain in their life. I cannot imagine how much fucking misery and distress they brought into the world. If you are out there, fuck you. Personally, one human to another, fuck you. If I could physically hurt you, I would. Keep in mind this is coming from an extremely measured, empathetic and thoughtful individual; not someone quick to anger or likely to rant on social media.
- wilg 10mo agoI'm trying to understand if it's actually true that he did not "opt in" to OneDrive and that his files "one day appeared" there, which seems unlikely. I'm not here to say Microsoft is capable of designing or engineering anything properly, but I'm trying to understand if this is a bug, dark pattern, "user error", or what. Backups of course would have helped.
- tacticus 10mo agoit's a dark pattern. Basically update after update has pushed "protect your computer back up now" and the default option turns on one drive with "on demand" mode for downloaded files. basically one drive is the only place it's stored until you try to access it then turning off backup will then delete all the local files.
- 10mo ago
- lousken 10mo agoAlso their servers are so slow that it can take hours to download couple thousands of files. And there are many other nice bugs - like sync issues where your work goes randomly poof and nobody believes you because you got onedrive'd ... the fact that there is no messge from onedrive it did that is just messed up on its own
- BobbyTables2 10mo agoPeople should have their own (offline) backups. OneDrive is not backup. RAID is not backup.
- 112233 10mo agoany offline backup solution that would have prevented this ? I.e. that normal people could realistically use?
- optionalsquid 10mo agoIt wouldn't completely prevent data-loss, but most "normal" people would be a lot better off if they simply copied their important files to an external HDD or flash drive on a regular basis
- ozlikethewizard 10mo agoThis is it, the odds of both main drive and external failing at the same time are low enough for most people. As long as youre regularly backing up and therefore catching if the external has failed.
- Const-me 10mo agoFlash drives are less than ideal for backups. I think when they are stored cold i.e. unpowered, flash memory only retains data for a couple of years. Spinning hard drives are way more reliable for the use case.
- optionalsquid 10mo agoThat's true. But if they are stored unpowered for a couple of years, then you clearly aren't doing regular backups. OTOH, it's doesn't seem unlikely that the average person would leave a disk gathering dust, so advising people to use a regular HDD is probably the best approach
- 10mo ago
- pcurve 10mo agoOne drive royally screwed me over years ago and I lost many files. Watching this video completely triggered me. It's one of many reasons why I switched to Mac. Too bad I cannot get away from OneDrive because workplace uses them a lot.
- bigsaaaad 10mo ago[flagged]
- tartoran 10mo agoWindows keeps on nudging me to use Onedrive at work and I've always refused to do so. But it's become such a pain that I stopped using most office products unless really needed. When saving a file from excel you have to go through all these hoops to save it locally, it's really annoying. Unfortunately the majority of the cattle do use Onedrive and see no issue.
- Const-me 10mo ago> keeps on nudging me to use Onedrive At least on Windows 10, you only have to decline once, here’s how. Ctrl+Shift+Esc to launch task manager, “Startup” tab, right click on “Microsoft OneDrive”, select “Disable” from the context menu, then either reboot, or log out and log in.
- subtlestorm 10mo ago[dead]
- dakial1 10mo agoWell onedrive is nothing more than sharepoint disguised as a cloud drive. So they adapted a legacy pre-cloud era code to create a competitor to dropbox and google drive. Imagibe how well that code works…
- Jean-Papoulos 10mo agoMicrosoft developers are secretly the people doing the most work to develop alternatives to Windows, by making it hell on earth to use it
- kevin061 10mo agoI learned my lesson when Microsoft OneNote, upon having my notebooks full and my storage cap hit, did not even allow me to delete anything, because I could not save due to "storage full". However, it was also impossible to export OneNote locally because the newer apps only work with the cloud. I had to download an older version to download my files, delete some notebooks, and go back under the storage cap. Or I could have paid Microsoft. But I did not feel like it.
- fortranfiend 10mo agoI put all my cloud file sharing into the same local folder and let them fight it out, but also have a bitorrent sync of my monthly disk image as the backup.
- JohnFen 10mo agoOver half of my coworkers (and myself) have suffered data loss due to OneDrive, and so most people I work with go out of their way to avoid it. Management pushes people to use it anyway.
- PhilipDaineko 10mo agoI use O&O ShutUp10++ to completely get rid of OneDrive and other annoying Microsoft tools from the recent version of Windows.
- DmitryOlshansky 10mo agoOn a related note getting my share of data back from OneDrive was a painful exercise - tons of spurious write errors I spent best part of my evening getting everything back to my filesystem. Yes remote by default was enabled without my consent.