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OneDrive data now has an expiry date
- josefritzishere 4mo agoOneDrive already deletes files randomly... This only makes it worse.
- emayljames 4mo agoThis will have a huge impact on a lot of organisations, for example those that have a communal SharePoint, or shared document page: files shared from ex-employees for critical documentation is going to break.
- fuzzy2 4mo agoArguably, this situation is already broken right now. If an organization can't be bothered to use their tools (Sharepoint and the wider O365 ecosystem) correctly, it's entirely on them.
- watwut 4mo agoOrganization employees use tools in a way that is practical for them. In microsoft case, it often means "incorrectly" and that is on Microsoft too.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- pantulis 4mo agoAFAIK Sharepoint doesn't have these limitations. The idea is that in companies OneDrive should not be used for permanent stuff. Which is strange, to be granted, but after all using OneDrive for company documents basically means they are being shared out of some personal space that doesn't belong anywhere.
- kotaKat 4mo agoAnd if they haven't migrated the ownership of the OneDrive to another user's account in 12 months (such as cascading the drive up to the next manager to pull out whatever docs)... what kind of other bad IT and managerial practices are in use?
- pantulis 4mo agoThe worst managerial practice is to use OneDrive for company work purposes. For anybody else than the original creator these docs are nowhere to be found unless you know the shared URL.
- reddalo 4mo ago>shared out of some personal space that doesn't belong anywhere Do you care explaining this better? (moreover, to this day I still can't understand the difference between SharePoint and OneDrive -- if there's any)
- bux93 4mo agoDo you see "personal" and something that looks like your name in the path? That's your personal onedrive, like your home directory on a unix system. See "sites" in the URL? That's a sharepoint site (AKA teams "shared" folder). The former disappears (after a year) when the user license is removed. The latter is not associated with an individual user, so even if everyone in a team leaves the company it isn't just automatically removed. Following was wrong and had been edited: The non-business personal onedrive was a box.com/dropbox/g-drive competitor. Microsoft moved its backend to Sharepoint at some time. (Onedrive for business used Sharepoint from the get-go). The integration of the personal drive, even though it's a descendent from the 'for business' product, is still quite unintuitive in my opinion.
- pantulis 4mo agoExactly this!
- 4mo ago
- potatoproduct 4mo agoThis will cause some major headaches.
- Sparkenstein 4mo agoF OneDrive. They locked me out without any explanation and without any notificaiton, ended my subscription and I lost valuable photos forever. Stay away from it if you are looking for storage for any reason.
- brador 4mo agoData request. Or just sue them.
- elAhmo 4mo agoYou make it sound way simpler than it is. Their ToS are probably written in a way they are fully protected in cases like this.
- brador 4mo ago[flagged]
- jdiff 4mo agoThere's always an excuse, or perhaps someone who actually went through it might be aware of the process and limitations better than your surface level assumptions?
- hsbauauvhabzb 4mo ago‘Just sue a trillion dollar company’ does sound pretty easy.
- baobabKoodaa 4mo agoToS are not laws and can not override laws. If you are in any civilized jurisdiction, such as EU, you can sue.
- prmph 4mo agoIndeed, they are probably one of the worst cloud "storage" services ever to exist. I also lost data on their platform. Not sure why anyone would like to still use them. This follows a pattern of Microsoft mishandling their user's data. They even routinely delete code hosted on their servers when they shutdown services without handling the migration well. I'm building a digital document archive organizer platform that relies on users' own local machine storage and their cloud storage, and the only provider I trust to support are s3-compatible storage and Google drive (much as I'm wary of Google, Gdrive is reliable). Dropbox, Box, etc are also ok, but the storage is kind of expensive. I would never support OneDrive.
- patates 4mo agoI'm not against getting help from AI when writing, but at least take some time to make sure it's not place-filler slop. AI;DR: Starting from early July 2026, all associated data will be deleted 12 Months after a user license is removed.
- 1f60c 4mo agoNah, this is just slop. Took me 10 seconds to find this better link: https://mc.merill.net/message/MC1381110 https://mc.merill.net/message/MC1381110
- mrweasel 4mo ago> Let me paint a familiar picture. Someone leaves your organisation, or a licence gets removed as part of a cost-saving exercise. That's a rather weird way of phrasing it. It almost suggested that you shouldn't audit your license needs. Other than this was always the case, it's hard to see why data stored in a close account wouldn't get deleted.
- kotaKat 4mo ago> Someone leaves your organisation https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/retention-and-deletion#configure-automatic-access-delegation https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/retention-and-d... "By default, when a user is deleted, the user's manager is automatically given access to the user's OneDrive" Seems like it should be enough time to firesale the data out you need as a manager.
- raverbashing 4mo agoAlso the deletion will kick in after 12 months > Day 1: licence removed or user deleted: The clock starts. The OneDrive account is now unlicensed and the retention countdown begins. > Day 60: read-only mode: No more edits. So yeah if you spend 12 months without realizing you might need the data of someone who left then I think that's on you
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- metaphor 4mo agoData is on pragmatic lockout after 3 months, not 12. For years, enterprises have been conditioned to lean into OneDrive and forget about it. Indeed, that dark pattern is a festering disease across consumer Windows. This is classic Microsoft long rug pull.
- xnorswap 4mo agoIt's LLM phraseology. It comes up with a scenario where it could be a problem ( license removal ), and then it generates why a license might get removed ( "cost-saving" ). It's not a person thinking, so there's no real thought to whether it is really a likely scenario, it's just something that sounds plausible. I read too many blogs, I've come to spot these phrases that trip a feeling of, "Wait, do people really do that?". You'll still have someone along in the comments to suggest that this article isn't AI slop, and that people really do remove individual one-drive licenses from active people in an organisation to cut costs, that this is just "edited" by AI, etc. But it's slop from start to finish. Or in LLM speak, "The slop is real".
- reddalo 4mo agoThe whole OneDrive ecosystem is scary as hell. I don't want to imagine how much mess they have in their backend, given that most Microsoft 365 products rely on SharePoint in one way or another. And then, sometimes you get a "peek" of what's happening behind the scenes (spurious folders, random files appearing, hidden libraries, etc...).
- drooopy 4mo agoWhenever I was forced to interact with OneDrive, I couldn't help imagining the proverbial digital duct tape holding everything together behind the scenes.
- theshrike79 4mo agoProtip: rclone[0] is the easiest way to get all your stuff out of OneDrive. I did it about a year ago now and haven't looked back. Just make sure you're running the latest rclone version, I had some major issues with Debian Stable's version failing in weird ways. [0] https://rclone.org https://rclone.org
- bilekas 4mo agoOne drive is an insanely poorly implemented solution to a problem nobody really had. For enterprise companies, ones I've worked in at least, they will auto sync the users folder /c/Users/(name) with one drive, but there is some weird alternative they have to set on the windows system to actually use a workspace for the user. So when I'm on site somewhere, and have no access to a network that's safe, I can't access files that are in my documents folder, pictures or desktop.. when I never asked OneDrive to lift and shift my days off my machine. I've had the guys turn off one drive explicitly on my machine several times but it keeps reactivating itself as soon as I sign back into the AD. They can't figure it out, I can't trust it, and the company pays for it.
- liamwire 4mo agoCome on, a problem nobody really had? I wholeheartedly disagree. Data loss and the orthogonal problem of lacking free space on computers is/was a massive problem at enterprise scale and OneDrive, for all its many shortcomings, is well and truly into good-enough territory to cover the 80% case. I'd go so far as to argue that the scenario you've described is by far the less frequent one. And if it frustrates you, you're afforded the ability to designate files and entire folders to be kept downloaded at all times anyway.
- bilekas 4mo agoData loss and storage is always a challenge, that's why companies will have network drives, network storage that's not strongly coupled with your account acess. OneDrive doesn't solve the problem in a clean way. It adds an extra layer of brittleness.
- cheschire 4mo agoNetwork storage does not handle the online/offline switching as transparently as OneDrive (or other cloud storage). For large enterprises that old architecture you refer to means long lead times on network and storage outage notifications, and huge fallout if an outage window is blown. And if the building network goes down, or if your storage servers are located off site because you’re too big for one building and the commercial internet goes down, etc etc But it doesn’t have to be OneDrive. There are many other options. I run ownCloud 10 for my personal files. If I were a small to medium business, I would look hard at OCIS.
- fithisux 4mo agoI wonder why FTP is not enough?
- ernsheong 4mo agoPretty fair... if you don't pay, the data doesn't stay
- ThePowerOfDirge 4mo agoCough up the dough, or away your files will go.
- cube00 4mo agoRetention and legal holds: Data can still be deleted even if a retention policy or legal hold is in place, unless licensing or billing is restored first. Do not rely on holds alone to protect unlicensed data. Surprising it doesn't automatically move into an admin or company lawyer's drive so it can be dealt with rather then a few notifications which will probably be missed and the data permanently deleted.
- hsbauauvhabzb 4mo agoDon’t worry, you have ~30 days, that should be enough for you to audit your entire org. /s
- Dylan16807 4mo agoThat number has no connection to the actual system.
- hsbauauvhabzb 4mo agoI can’t see any suggestion that accounts already 12 months since they were deactivated won’t be nuked in July. You’re potentially getting a months notice in the short term.
- Dylan16807 4mo agoLooking into the actual announcements, they're not 100% clear but I'd be shocked if they skipped the archival period for old accounts. But also they originally announced this a long time ago and the official page says they've been rolling it out since January last year.
- hsbauauvhabzb 4mo agoI wouldn’t want to gamble on that assumption.
- 4mo ago
- quietbritishjim 4mo ago"Your OneDrive data..." No, it's not my OneDrive data. What an infuriatingly click-bait title. It's OneDrive data for individaul user accounts at organisations that are unlicensed (probably, as the article says, for people that have left).
- Double_a_92 4mo agoI'm also unsure what they wanted Microsoft to do. Just store data that apparently doesn't belong to anyone anymore forever?
- hparadiz 4mo agoOneDrive turns itself on after an update so what you think is local data can easily become cloud data. Then while you're not paying attention to a long running system they quietly delete it. Then folks like you come out of the woodwork to defend them. It's hilarious.
- quietbritishjim 4mo agoWhat system would still be storing this locally long after the user has left the company? The second half of your comment is bordering on a personal attack and not very helpful.
- hparadiz 4mo agoYou are the example I was pointing out. At no point did I say anything about a company account. This happens on all windows machines. You can for example login to a machine acting as a server simply to use the Microsoft store to install something only to have it start syncing your files to that machine or even intermingle them and then force you to go through a tedious clean up process. I have seen grandparents accidently lose all their files because they didn't know their files were being synced and then when they removed the Microsoft account from their machine suddenly their files are missing. Situations where they were told by support to logout / login only to lose all their data. These people take weeks or months to finally get someone's attention about the problem irl and these are precisely the types of people who will now be losing data because of the cavalier attitude from the so called experts.
- monster_truck 4mo agoYou can find multiple comments on past OneDrive posts from people who are/were at Microsoft with frankly terrifying stories of them losing their own or customer data. They all said the same thing: Do not use or trust OneDrive. IIRC one of the funnier examples was users, their managers, and so on all the way up the chain (perhaps including HR and Legal) being let go resulting in there being no user to transfer the ownership/access to so it was simply deleted.
- einpoklum 4mo agoDon't use Microsoft OneDrive. They mine your data and share it with the US government. And - as the International Criminal Court staff has recently discovered - they will cut you off from your data if they, or the US government, decide they don't like you.
- rochak 4mo agoJoke of a company
- cde-v 4mo agoOneDrive itself should have expired years ago.
- cryo32 4mo agoDon’t put your data in onedrive at all. We’ve experienced multiple cases of data loss which were definitely either implementation bugs or files simply being unreadable or lost.
- somethingsome 4mo agoAt least onedrive do not corrupt my powerpoints, while pcloud systematically break them, police change, elements resized randomely. It happens systematically with powerpoints weighting more than 100Mb.
- cryo32 4mo agoI wouldn’t use any cloud stuff for any Microsoft document formats. Copy it in after you’ve done the work at most.
- blain 4mo agoI'm really confused by the article. What the hell does unlicensed mean? Does unlicensed means free (as in free personal onedrive accounts)?
- Lucasoato 4mo agoIf you start uploading data to your cloud without my clear consent, I already see a very big problem with your product. If you even substitute the directories in my computer (a standard that was untouched for the last 20 years) in a way to force my stuff into your cloud, then there’s a much bigger problem. Managers who approved this should be thrown out of the company because this is clearly how NOT to make a product.
- expedition32 4mo agoMicrosoft had the idea that PCs are like phones. Google/Apple sync everything in the background so Microsoft wanted to do it as well.
- 0x1d7 4mo agoWhat does this have to do with the article you're responding to which is about OneDrive for Business? More HN comments, less reddit comments, please.
- pwarner 4mo agoSharePoint/ OneDrive suck, but this policy change seems sane. What's crazy if anything is that they didn't have this policy before.
- Fizz43 4mo agoIn an enterprise environment onedrive is perfectly fine. Yet so many developers think they're to good for it. They save their things outside of onedrive and low and behold they lose data. Its so dumb and im yet to hear a good reason why they couldnt have used onedrive.
- bad_username 4mo agoI am on an enterprise environment. I had non stop issues with OneDrive, such as OneDrive process always pegged at 100% CPU, files not synching, files going cloud-only and inaccessible without Internet, and issues in git repos. I go out of my way to avoid OneDrive at any cost, including the cost of using a separate backup system for my files.
- Fizz43 4mo agodont look at CPU in windows. There is always something cranking it to 100% thats just how windows 11 is.
- fastasucan 4mo agoLo and behold* Git folders doesn't go well with onedrive.
- jnd0 4mo agoThat happened to me many yeas ago with Dropbox. I had all my old android's phone gallery there and many years ago. I tried getting them and they were all removed. All my memories removed.
- michaelfm1211 4mo agoThis sounds very reasonable. If you stop paying then they stop serving you. Am I missing something?
- b3lvedere 4mo agoApologies for my unknowning, but how did this blog get this information? There's no source or anything linked.
- NordSteve 4mo agoIt is in Messace Center post MC1381210, published June 5.
- seemaze 4mo agolol, my org recently silently implemented automatic archiving for SharePoint files with mtimes older than 5 years. Woke up to 20,000 files in cold storage and the only user facing remedy is to manually restore each file one at a time. After speaking with IT for several days, they begrudgingly exempted my site after ‘leadership approval’ but were confounded as to “why anyone would need files older than 5 years” Forget the AI boom, there still orgs struggling with storage, databases, and email.
- torgoguys 4mo agoHasn't this already been the case? https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/unlicensed-onedrive-accounts#enforcement-of-policy-changes-for-unlicensed-onedrive-accounts https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/unlicensed-oned...
- g8oz 4mo agoHere is one approach for the frustrated end user forced to deal with OneDrive: Create a local user account and do all your work in there. Periodically manually upload important folders to your OneDrive workspace. Manually upload relevant files to shared team folders. Keep the Microsoft Edge browser as your SharePoint workspace. Work on shared Office artifacts through the Edge browser. Use Chrome or Firefox for everything else. Results may vary depending on your organization's configuration and policies. You may get labeled as a rogue employee. But if you keep code synced with GitHub, keep Confluence docs updated, stay responsive when shared docs need your input, people might never notice.
- hosteur 4mo agoJust came back to work today to find that OneDrive lost me almost all of Friday’s work. My changes are nowhere to be found in “previous version”. OneDrive is such a mess.
- frogperson 4mo agothere is a reason MSFT is down and not recovering. No matter the product, no one ever has anythi g good to say about microsoft. How can they be sooo bad at litterally everything and stay in business?
- domysee 4mo agoBesides the OneDrive hate here, this doesn't seem that newsworthy? It reads like the storage of users that have their license revoked will be deleted. Which is how I'd expect the service to work. If anything, it's weird that their files were kept.