[HN Gopher] OneDrive data now has an expiry date
___________________________________________________________________
OneDrive data now has an expiry date
Author : taubek
Score : 159 points
Date : 2026-06-08 08:11 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ms365news.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ms365news.com)
| emayljames wrote:
| This 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 wrote:
| Arguably, 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 wrote:
| Organization employees use tools in a way that is practical
| for them. In microsoft case, it often means "incorrectly" and
| that is on Microsoft too.
| pantulis wrote:
| AFAIK 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 wrote:
| And 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 wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| Do 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 wrote:
| Exactly this!
| 0x1d7 wrote:
| Odfb has always had a SharePoint backend. Used to be
| called MySites and carried no relation to the consumer
| product you're confusing it with.
| potatoproduct wrote:
| This will cause some major headaches.
| Sparkenstein wrote:
| F 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 wrote:
| Data request. Or just sue them.
| elAhmo wrote:
| You make it sound way simpler than it is. Their ToS are
| probably written in a way they are fully protected in cases
| like this.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| ToS are not laws and can not override laws. If you are in
| any civilized jurisdiction, such as EU, you can sue.
| prmph wrote:
| Indeed, 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.
| hparadiz wrote:
| This is data theft and there should be criminal charges against
| Microsoft for this nonsense.
| patates wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| Nah, this is just slop.
|
| Took me 10 seconds to find this better link:
| https://mc.merill.net/message/MC1381110
| mrweasel wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| > Someone leaves your organisation
|
| 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 wrote:
| Also 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
| metaphor wrote:
| Data 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 wrote:
| It'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".
| cubefox wrote:
| Related story: I recently watched a new video by a well-known
| YouTuber whom I was subscribed to for years. Something was
| off with the video: the script sounded like LLM slop. It
| sounded as if the author provided some bullet points on the
| main content of the script, and then let the LLM "expand" on
| it, with its typical, overly verbose, mode-collapsed LLM
| style. Then the YouTuber seems to have added some light edits
| to the script himself because it did sound real occasionally.
|
| This was just after a few minutes of video and I didn't
| finish watching it. At a quick glance, I didn't see anybody
| else pointing this out in the comments. Disappointing.
|
| How can I be so certain about LLM usage after just a few
| minutes? It's both the fact that it sounded like slop, _and_
| the fact that I intuitively know his real writing style from
| past years, and it simply sounded very different this time.
|
| An article about OneDrive being substantially LLM written is
| sort of okay (who cares about OneDrive by some Office365
| blog), but if people you thought you like resort to these
| methods I feel betrayed.
| xnorswap wrote:
| I had something similar happen where someone linked a blog
| article, I thought it sounded like slop, especially since
| they were posting 2-3 articles a day, but I wasn't sure so
| I checked their back catalogue.
|
| I then saw they've always written like that, and always
| posted 2-3 articles a day, so I figured they're prolific
| and LLMs copied their style.
|
| Then I read their first post again, and realised I should
| check the wayback machine.
|
| Sure enough, they had gone through their entire post
| history, and had rewritten it with an LLM, to make it less
| obvious when they started using them.
|
| Now, this was always a bit of a junk site, a knock-off
| Boing Boing, but it seems incredible to me that someone
| would replace their original posts with AI gen.
|
| Surely it destroys any reputation you might have?
|
| A site they've been running for nearly 20 years,
| overwritten by slop.
|
| Compare:
|
| Original: https://web.archive.org/web/20191017113113/https:
| //www.geeky...
|
| Rewritten slop: https://www.geeky-gadgets.com/metal-
| detecting-sandals/
| consp wrote:
| Damn this is horrible. So the author chose to waste
| everyone's time by expanding with cow manure. I generally
| don't read much articles online anymore since they are
| all likely to contain slop unless authored by known non-
| slop users.
| drob518 wrote:
| Yea, that's sad.
| _-_-__-_-_- wrote:
| I get the feeling lots of blogs that are making
| advertising money are incentivized to do this: the most
| SEO buzzwords, the most "clinical" language, the most
| adjectives... I get that "this isn't right" feeling often
| now and I usually just close the browser and do something
| else.
| cubefox wrote:
| So he is rewriting the past without any visible indicator
| that he did so, and with the original publication date.
| That's deceptive and borders on unethical.
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| > _or a licence gets removed as part of_
|
| Or, as is more common in large enterprise licensing schemes -
| the vendor changes the terms and the customer never notices.
| And the .gov side of Microsoft licensing changes as often and
| as inscrutably as the commercial side of Microsoft licensing.
|
| We've had more than a few discussions where conference calls
| with Microsoft end with the "oh, that used to be part of your
| license, but now it isn't" with the only solution being to bend
| over and open up the agency's wallet.
| reddalo wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| Whenever I was forced to interact with OneDrive, I couldn't
| help imagining the proverbial digital duct tape holding
| everything together behind the scenes.
| bilekas wrote:
| One 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 wrote:
| Come 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 wrote:
| Data 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 wrote:
| Network 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.
| rcxdude wrote:
| onedrive doesn't really handle online/offline switching
| well. Unless you configure it carefully, it will
| generally not keep stuff local and so things will break
| without an internet connection.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Network drives mean no local retention and no real good
| answer for Windows+Mac+Android+iOS clients to remotely
| access the files. It also doesn't solve sharing those files
| externally with granular permissions.
|
| All of these kinds things need protection against data loss
| and centralized control+management, not just the user
| folder alone.
| vrighter wrote:
| isn't that also the case witf onedrive because it deletes
| local copies?
| seb1204 wrote:
| 10 years ago this was not a key requirement. But now it
| is
|
| Sadly One Drive has pushed out the implementation of
| proper DMS in some instances.
| vel0city wrote:
| > Network drives mean no local retention
|
| Technically speaking, Windows does support client-side
| caching on network drives. I've used it in the past for
| _a highly limited number of users_ (read: me, on a
| personal share) and it works kind of like OneDrive
| /Dropbox/other cloud platform. But it's really rough and
| doesn't handle conflicts well.
|
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/iis/web-
| hosting/configurin...
| Scroll_Swe wrote:
| And as someone who worked and still works in IT support,
| users will not save to network drives, their machine will
| crash and files will be lost.
|
| YES, you can do GPO redirect desktop etc to network drive
| but needs a VPN and sync is also slow.
|
| OneDrive has solved this, like it or not.
| lifeisgood99 wrote:
| Sure. And you wouldn't need phishing protections if users
| had brains. But then you run into real users so hand-
| holding solutions start to make sense.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Seems to me that if you want to experience data loss,
| Sharepoint is going to cover your needs just fine.
| PxldLtd wrote:
| The whole thing is a cobbled together bodge over SharePoint as
| a backend. I wouldn't ever trust my company data with that
| dogwater product.
|
| Back when I had to work with it I found a bug that could cause
| folders to become un-synced without you realising, meaning
| changes would not be tracked and cause merge-conflicts when it
| was fixed.
|
| Managed to use our Gold partner tickets to raise the issue with
| the product team, they flat out refused to fix the issue even
| knowing it was a bug. This was back in 2020 or so, I wonder if
| they ever fixed that bug. It's pretty simple to reproduce:
|
| 1. - Sync a nested subfolder from Sharepoint
|
| 2. - Sync the parent folder
|
| 3. - Note that the folder synced in 1. is not longer being
| tracked (no checkmark)
|
| 4. - Normal users will now go to folder 1. by default and have
| no idea none of their changes are no longer being tracked now
| that it's being synced within folder 2.
| totetsu wrote:
| Isn't sharepoint itself a cobbled together on top of
| Microsoft Exchange mailboxes?
| skywhopper wrote:
| Plus some WebDAV hacks via the MS Frontpage HTML editor!
| Truly great software engineering and design.
| mlnj wrote:
| So it's MS products all the way down.
| brnt wrote:
| Somehow finding the Frontpage HTML editors down at the
| bottom makes it feel slightly better. At least it bring a
| fond memory while navigating our corporate Sharepoint
| horrorfest.
| hilariously wrote:
| Don't forget the worst SQL Server database I have ever
| seen. Single threaded hacks all throughout because it so
| shitty it can't deal with parallel queries.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| The university I attend uses SharePoint, classroom and moodle
| for various courses.
|
| SharePoint is by far the worst piece of software I've ever
| used. Like, there's no mental model to be done, not
| intuitive, not working, files disappear from time to time,
| and I could go on for hours
| reddalo wrote:
| Moodle is also pretty garbage-y if I may say so.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| I'd say its ui is not that great and it is not intuitive
| when searching courses, but at least it... Works? I mean,
| using SharePoint might require me to reload the page more
| than once because I literally don't see the files
| sometimes
| password4321 wrote:
| Downloads folder to the rescue, hallelujah!
| eks391 wrote:
| I have almost exclusively used the downloads folder since a
| late teen, because I realized it was the only place where I
| could trust microslop to not mess with my stuff.
|
| Now I mostly use my self hosted cloud, but I do still have
| all of my short term things in downloads that don't need a
| form of backup
| wartywhoa23 wrote:
| >One drive is an insanely poorly implemented solution to a
| problem nobody really had.
|
| I highly doubt that the need to steal as much data and media
| from people to train AI was a problem nobody really had.
| pezgrande wrote:
| I'd guess it is more about making companies paying more and
| higher subs than training data.
| Scroll_Swe wrote:
| Standard sub gives 1TB per user.
|
| Laptop drives are still 256 or 512GB in office work.
|
| No real need to pay for "higher subs"
| expedition32 wrote:
| It's about pushing subs in the first place. Normal people
| don't need it they can save stuff to their HD/SSD like
| they've been doing for the last 30 years.
|
| But here comes Microsoft enabling OneDrive by default.
| How many tech illiterate folks have been pushed into
| paying for 365? Fuck MS.
| Scroll_Swe wrote:
| I am talking about companies to be precise.
|
| Office 365 was and is a godsend compare to running
| Exchange and massive SANs on-prem...
|
| They knew this so Office 365 at first was literally only
| email at first so people could stop having OWA on prem
| open to the web.
| Scroll_Swe wrote:
| You are conflating private OneDrive with enterprise Office
| 365 Sharepoint based solution.
|
| Also that came out 10-13 years ago... way before AI. Why are
| people on this site such midwits?
| SirFatty wrote:
| I guess because the general hatred of Microsoft interferes
| with people's ability to think logically.
| eks391 wrote:
| > hatred of Microsoft interferes with people's ability to
| think logically
|
| 100%. I fall in the 'I hate MS (and Apple, and Google,
| and...)' crowd myself. I lose brain cells every time I
| have to use MS products, so I definitely make nonlogical
| statements about these companies sometimes. I admit that
| my biasies are strong and one can't fully trust my
| opinion when I talk about these companies. But I do try
| to lace mostly truth, even if I exaggerate.
| wartywhoa23 wrote:
| > Also that came out 10-13 years ago... way before AI.
|
| Do you think AI training and preceding data vacuuming
| started yesterday? Was there no "Big Data" hype immediately
| before LLMs took off?
|
| > Why are people on this site such midwits?
|
| Address this question to a mirror.
| Scroll_Swe wrote:
| I get the irony lmao
|
| But Big Data was just a large SQL set for companies
| internally. Usually. The sinister part would be adverts
| and tracking I guess if that is what you are fishing for.
| Scroll_Swe wrote:
| And as someone who worked and still works in IT support, users
| will not save to network drives, their machine will crash and
| files will be lost.
|
| YES, you can do GPO redirect desktop etc to network drive but
| needs a VPN and sync is also slow.
|
| OneDrive has solved this, like it or not.
|
| >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.
|
| Probably enterprise config. Standard OneDrive office 365
| enterprise with SharePoint can absolutely work over the "normal
| internet", you don't need a "network that's safe" whatever that
| means. VPN? Anyway the big office 365 win was it will work over
| the normal internet without running /owa open on your exchange
| server.
| joe_mamba wrote:
| _> And as someone who worked and still works in IT support,
| users will not save to network drives, their machine will
| crash and files will be lost. [...] OneDrive has solved this,
| like it or not._
|
| In my previous job there was an app(by Dell EMC I think) that
| would run every day at lunch and backup all your user
| document folders to some company network drive. You could
| then view all your backup files in the webUI.
|
| So network backup feels like a solved problem for decades
| now.
|
| However, cloud is more than just a backup solution.
| Scroll_Swe wrote:
| Some jank 3rd party app is never preferred over a native MS
| solution.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Lol. OneDrive is the most jank solution there is.
| knollimar wrote:
| Id rather the people being irresponsible with their files
| lose them than me randomly.
|
| My IT even set up my downloads folder to sync... my job
| involves downloading 4gb files and throwing them away after I
| run a script on them frequently...
| vel0city wrote:
| That sounds more like an issue with your relationship with
| your IT guy than OneDrive as a product.
|
| Not necessarily blaming you for the relationship fault, but
| someone forcing using the software improperly isn't really
| a failure of the software.
| knollimar wrote:
| The second part is, yeah. I'm more annoyed with the whole
| concept and was using that as evidence of its
| reliability, and also about how we're willing to
| sacrifice time without thinking about tradesoffs when it
| comes to "more onedrive backup better"
| elzbardico wrote:
| Cloud document best use case is document sharing for online
| collaboration, backup is a side effect, and frankly, as
| backup solution it is far from ideal.
|
| Frankly, the best configuration is NOT installing OneDrive on
| user machines, actually disallow users to install it and let
| them share files from office 365 itself when they actually
| want to share those files. And then, have a proper network
| backup solution.
|
| Make
| soundnote wrote:
| Also just having your stuff available on multiple devices,
| having it be easy to move devices, etc.
|
| All that said, I don't like the deep desktop-OneDrive type
| integration, very much a clear, separate sync folders type
| person, even if I store a bunch of my stuff inside said
| folder. But Sync Service Kingdoms are to be very clear,
| it's the one way they will be ~99% benefit, 1% headache.
| g8oz wrote:
| The failure modes of OneDrive outweigh the wins for many
| individual users.
|
| It may be good enough in the aggregate from the perspective
| of IT admins.
|
| No catastrophic failures, just a steady drip of confusion,
| friction, frustration and lost productivity for the users.
| hparadiz wrote:
| That's why Dropbox exists. Superior in every way.
| rcxdude wrote:
| You could use an actual backup solution, OneDrive is not
| that.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Plus the sync results in so many errors and duplicates even on
| a personal drive with one machine that it is not fit for
| purpose.
| al_borland wrote:
| I've seen a lot of people have issues with git, because this is
| going on in the background and they don't realize it.
|
| They'll change branches, then OneDrive sees files are missing,
| so it starts pulling them back down. It makes a mess.
|
| Any new hire we get, we need to make sure to explicitly tell
| them not to keep their code in a folder managed by OneDrive,
| but they never listen. They speak up about a month later,
| complaining about weird issues.
|
| On my last laptop refresh I also had to manually enable the
| sync. It didn't just happen. I knew if I used the local folders
| that would eventually stop working and things would get lost.
|
| I've also seen a lot of confusion from people who save
| something to their desktop, and it's not there... because they
| didn't save it to their OneDrive desktop. This is always fun to
| explain.
|
| OneDrive is also now our backup, but they only sync 3 folders
| from the home directory. If your work has you using other
| folders, good luck and enjoy your data loss. I setup a
| scheduled job to backup some of my other key files to OneDrive,
| but that was quite annoying. I'm sure I'm in the minority.
|
| The enterprise enables all this stuff, but never actually tells
| anyone. They think it will "just work", but it creates a
| confusing mess that every employee eventually has to figure
| out.
| prepend wrote:
| I keep my code in OneDrive. I probably have hundreds of repos
| cloned and active. Been going like this since like 2018 or
| so.
|
| I've never had problems except for warnings about deleting
| lots of filed when I git branch or checkout or whatever.
|
| I would expect onedrive not to pull down files after a
| checkout because from a file io, it's deleting and copying in
| new files, right?
| rcxdude wrote:
| You're pretty lucky, then. This kind of file sync is a
| cursed problem in general (in that a truly robust solution
| is just not possible), but onedrive seems to be
| particularly bad in terms of reverting local changes, not
| syncing changes, and generally messing things up,
| especially when there's a lot of files, and even when
| there's only one user of the data. (it also makes anything
| involving writing lots of temporary files even slower, like
| most software builds).
| lepton wrote:
| It needs to read the repo under .git; that's a lot of files
| that may not be synced, depending on local disk space,
| frequency of use, etc. The local disk is just a cache.
|
| There may be an option to Always keep on this device, which
| might help.
| rcxdude wrote:
| It is irritating how Microsoft markets onedrive as a backup
| solution, because then people think 'oh, we have onedrive,
| why do we need another backup solution?', when onedrive is so
| unsuited to being the working copy of so many different kinds
| of data.
| reddalo wrote:
| Also, it's not even a backup. If your files are only on
| OneDrive (which is the default "storage save" setting),
| good luck recovering them if they break into your account.
| bayindirh wrote:
| The problem is, even though one knows that OneDrive is not
| a viable backup solution, Microsoft crippled its own
| "Windows Backup" feature and buried under the rock.
|
| Now I have to pay another company to be able to have a
| proper backup solution. Why trash your own competent
| solution for monies and data extraction? It's not a wise
| move.
| hulitu wrote:
| > It is irritating how Microsoft markets onedrive as a
| backup solution
|
| Microsoft has a long history of messing with user files
| (Sharepoint checkout to "My Documents" wherever "My
| Documents" points today. Avoid at all cost.
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| This is why we had to add some group policy changes to ban
| One Drive throughout our agency. Additionally, some of our
| work is "confidential" and non-public which also got the
| legislature to ban the use of One Drive for most stuff (they
| specifically stated "cloud").
| bilekas wrote:
| > I've seen a lot of people have issues with git, because
| this is going on in the background and they don't realize it.
|
| Having git tied to a one drive folder is diabolical. We might
| aswell move back to SVN at that stage.
| f4stjack wrote:
| The best thing you can do with an enterprise Onedrive is having
| long long file and folder names. The moment it exceeds 255
| characters, the software application dies. I am ready to hear
| easier fixes but so far this worked:
|
| - Rename the offending folder from the web
|
| - Unlink the folder from the user's machine
|
| - Delete the existing onedrive folder
|
| - Relink and resync
|
| The best part is, the web side of onedrive has practically
| unlimited length, the windows part has. As long as you don't
| sync, you don't experience anything but god forbid if you try
| to do it.
|
| Also do not get me started on "Add a shortcut/Sync" debate. All
| in all, onedrive feels like a system that works but will feed
| you to the wolves the moment it hiccups. But on the enterprise
| side that's the only game in town so... we suffer altogether.
| cinntaile wrote:
| You can change that setting in Windows so that it no longer
| has a 255 character limit.
| f4stjack wrote:
| Yes, you can but then if you have any older software in
| your system (for company reasons) will not play ball. And
| it is a workaround, not a permanent solution. Because we
| still do not have that fabled WinFS so...
| rescbr wrote:
| Eh, NTFS supported long paths since forever, the problem
| is with applications using Win32 APIs that are limited to
| MAX_PATH (260 characters) path length.
|
| There won't be a permanent solution unless all Windows
| applications start using NT path formatting - which won't
| happen.
| knollimar wrote:
| One drive still dies though
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| Win64 lacks the problem with 255 characters [0]. However,
| stuff like File Explorer, which the vast majority of my
| users actually use, can only pass the first 255 characters
| to the registered application [1], so will Explorer will
| display stuff with huge long paths, double-clicking that
| file, or right clicking and "Compress to..." will cause an
| error.
|
| 0 - 32 bit windows will always have this problem.
|
| 1 - This is because File Explorer uses a hodgepodge of
| Win32 and Win64 stuff behind the scenes when running 64 bit
| windows.
| somethingsome wrote:
| My workplace has named (forcefully) the onedrive folder with
| around 35 characters. You add to that the path to that folder
| on the computer that is (forcefully) not on the root of a
| disk. I now mostly need a flat structure for my files. 4-5
| subfolders and a file and onedrive dies.
| cryo32 wrote:
| An elderly family member rearranged her family tree into
| folders that were so deep it broke onedrive entirely.
|
| Of course it was not set to keep all files on the PC so it
| just trashed them.
|
| Be careful.
|
| I turned onedrive off and removed it. Then just cross fingers
| she drops dead before the disk does. If I go over there I
| robocopy it onto a USB stick.
| lencastre wrote:
| so many times,... I've lost count
| Neil44 wrote:
| No access to a network that's safe? Do you have a zero day on
| SSL we should know about?
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| You can easily set OneDrive to keep a local copy of all files.
| dpoloncsak wrote:
| OneDrive likes to come back when O365 updates I think, but you
| might be able to change the settings to just not back those
| dirs up?
| fithisux wrote:
| I wonder why FTP is not enough?
| ernsheong wrote:
| Pretty fair... if you don't pay, the data doesn't stay
| ThePowerOfDirge wrote:
| Cough up the dough, or away your files will go.
| cube00 wrote:
| _Retention 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 wrote:
| Don't worry, you have ~30 days, that should be enough for you
| to audit your entire org. /s
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| That number has no connection to the actual system.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Looking 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.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| I'm also unsure what they wanted Microsoft to do. Just store
| data that apparently doesn't belong to anyone anymore forever?
| hparadiz wrote:
| OneDrive 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 wrote:
| What 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 wrote:
| You 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.
| Double_a_92 wrote:
| Then the actual issue is that OneDrive syncs deactivated
| (empty) accounts to your system, deleting the offline files
| as well..?
| hparadiz wrote:
| I've seen all sorts of situations. The problem is that
| after updates OneDrive tends to turn itself on or enable
| syncing when it was previously disabled without telling
| you. Or you use a Microsoft account to install something
| through their store and bam suddenly the local drive is
| intermingled with yours. It's a mess precisely because
| it's built in.
| monster_truck wrote:
| You 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 wrote:
| Don'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 wrote:
| Joke of a company
| cde-v wrote:
| OneDrive itself should have expired years ago.
| cryo32 wrote:
| Don'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 wrote:
| At 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 wrote:
| I wouldn't use any cloud stuff for any Microsoft document
| formats. Copy it in after you've done the work at most.
| blain wrote:
| I'm really confused by the article. What the hell does unlicensed
| mean? Does unlicensed means free (as in free personal onedrive
| accounts)?
| Lucasoato wrote:
| If 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 wrote:
| Microsoft had the idea that PCs are like phones.
|
| Google/Apple sync everything in the background so Microsoft
| wanted to do it as well.
| 0x1d7 wrote:
| What 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.
| hparadiz wrote:
| He's right. I've had this garbage turns itself on then steal
| files into the cloud. When you disconnect it your files are
| suddenly gone and you have no idea why. There's a reason I
| daily drive Linux.
| kg wrote:
| The behavior described is what OneDrive does
| pwarner wrote:
| SharePoint/ OneDrive suck, but this policy change seems sane.
| What's crazy if anything is that they didn't have this policy
| before.
| Fizz43 wrote:
| In 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 wrote:
| I 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.
| jnd0 wrote:
| That 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 wrote:
| This sounds very reasonable. If you stop paying then they stop
| serving you. Am I missing something?
| b3lvedere wrote:
| Apologies for my unknowning, but how did this blog get this
| information? There's no source or anything linked.
| NordSteve wrote:
| It is in Messace Center post MC1381210, published June 5.
| seemaze wrote:
| lol, 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.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| OneDrive already deletes files randomly... This only makes it
| worse.
| torgoguys wrote:
| Hasn't this already been the case?
|
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/unlicensed-oned...
| g8oz wrote:
| Here 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 wrote:
| Just 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 wrote:
| there 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?
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