OneDrive - NoPoint?

Just what the Hell is the point of Microsoft's wretched "OneDrive"?

MS up-dated (so down-graded) my PC from Win-10 to Win-11, replacing their own, long-established and efficient file-handling system with a cheapskate mess, grossly interfering with my filing system and losing a lot of photographs in the process.

It also barred entry to my two perfectly good USB external drives, making backing-up anything difficult. (I will NOT use MS' so-called "Cloud". I do not trust the company.)

Recently MS forced more up-dates on me, and it seems I am by no means the only user to find the latest blocks or loses 'Excel' files. That includes one of mine too important to lose, before I could copy its most recent version. It raises an error message saying it or its location is "read only" (not by the Properties tool, it isn't) or on an unresponsive server.

In trying to recover it, hampered rather than helped by MS' over-complicated, leading-question 'Support' system, I discovered a huge number of my files on something called "OneDrive" - which is not that listed in the tatty side-bar index..

I did not put them there!

Worse, they are all jumbled up, not in basic file-type order, not even in alphabetical or date order.
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I've also had this site freeze itself and whole PC with it several times - again only since the latest interference from MS.

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What exactly are the Seattle Cowboys playing at? Why did they give themselves the right to interfere with your own computer and data so grossly and so ineptly, and to copy or move them randomly to one enormous directory of their own?

I will have to buy a new USB drive compatible with MS WIN-11 and earlier (not cheap) and move all my data to it before the incompetents Gates now employs, makes even more of a mess of them.

I will also need find a professional repairer to recover that spreadsheet and pull back into my control any other MS-lost / OneDrive /Cloud files - not cheap either.

One-Drive? Aye - Drive-One-Up-The-Wall.

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JoyfulSilence · 51-55, M

OneDrive is just cloud storage.

They give you, I think, 15 GB free, yet you can buy more.

There is a One Drive folder set up on your computer's C drive to allow you to upload to cloud storage on MS servers. I do not recall the path, so let's just call it A. Initialky, A is empty.

At the same time, a directory, call it B, is set up for you on the MS cloud servers. B also is empty

Suppose there is a file, X, with name "MyFile" somewhere else on your C drive. To upload a copy of X to the cloud, first copy X and paste it into the One Drive folder A. Suppose I call the copy Y. It will have path
A + "\MyFile", where plus just means concatenate the two strings.

You can also move X (cut and paste) to A, but this is risky since you lose X and only retain Y. I would only cut and paste if you lack disk space and prefer only having one copy of MyFile on your C drive.

Then the synchronization begins. MS notices a change to A and runs the synchronizer, which updates B so that it matches A (all of it, including the subtree of folders you may end up making in A).

This takes time, since it goes over the internet. While it is synching with the cloud, you will see a little icon like two arrows moving in a circle. The file
Y = A+"\MyFile" is being uploaded to B.

When it is done, you will see a green checkmark next to Y, and B will have a copy of Y. Call it Z. It will have path B+"\MyFile"

So at this point, you have three copies
X = "C:\...\MyFile"
Y = A+"\MyFile"
Z = B+"\MyFile"

X and Y are on your C drive
Z is on cloud on an MS server (presumably secure!)

Unless, of course, you had cut and pasted (moved) X to Y, in which case X is now in the recycle bin, and lost when you empty the bin.

So now, if your computer fails or some upgrade or mistake deletes X or Y, you still have Z. Also, I think it may allow easy sharing of Z across a network.

But having two copies of MyFile on your C drive may take up too much space. Yet you can remove Y.

If you go to B+"\MyFile" and right click, there is some option to "Free up Space", if I recall. Clicking on this will delete Y from memory. Yet X and Z are untouched.

After thus happens, you still see Y in the directory tree, yet the green check for Y is replaced with a little puffy cloud (cute!). The file Y is recycled, yet the link (to Z) is retained. So if you click on the Y icon it will go to the cloud, download a copy of Z, and show it.

I do not recall if this creates a new, local copy (call it W), with a green check rather than a cloud, which then gets synched back to Z. My guess is it does, since my guess is Z's data must be local to open.

But Office 365 is cloud based, so some apps might bounce back and forth.

I do not care as long as it works, is quick enough, secure, etc.

So if you change B+"\MyFile" to the cloud icon, you only have copy X (unless you had deleted it), and copy Z on the cloud.

If you really need space, you can delete X, only leaving Z, which you access by clicking on the icon for Y, which you still see. Recall, at this point, Y only points to Z, rather than a local copy.

To delete Z, you delete the Y icon, which removes Y from A, both the file, if it is local, and the link back to Z. Then the computer resynchs, and notices Z links to something no longer in A, so it deletes Z.

I had some huge file X for work. I needed local space, so uploaded it to make Z, and deleted both X and Y.

ArishMell · 70-79, M

@JoyfulSilence Thankyou very much for the explanation.

That suggests it is under the user's control but that was not my experience, and I thought I had permanently lost a number of files until discovering MS had put them on OneDrive all by itself, without telling me, let alone asking me first.

Interrogating OneDrive also shows it is one enormous folder with no directory structure.

It also does not explain why MS had copied random photographs from my folders and placed them, mixed with strange images from elsewhere, within its Bing/MSN links.

I have gone through the "Installed apps" index and deleted or turned off what of MS' features it allows, that I neither need or want.

JoyfulSilence · 51-55, M

@ArishMell

Sorry for your problems.

I think they want us to all become dependent on their cloud storage, to the point where we all need more and more, and then have to pay for it.

Yet it does make some sense, conceptually, to allow backups and maybe make things easier to share. On the flip side is more control by Big Brother. They no longer sell devices with isolated operating systems with isolated apps you "own." Rather, it is a "service" that they "lease" to you, constantly updating it, etc.

ArishMell · 70-79, M

@JoyfulSilence Thankyou!

At least I succeeded in regaining control, and my next move which I have been promising myself for some while, is an extension hard-drive that will work on both WIN-7 and WIN-11. Doing so will facilitate copying, even moving, files to an off-line PC and separate drives.

The impression I have is that MS is particularly interested in users' photographs, for no clear purpose, and it might give them a bit of shock if I take the whole lot off!

One reason I needed repair this PC is that it holds some hefty third-party software - which I purchased, not leased, from its publishers - that won't run on any other OS.

JoyfulSilence · 51-55, M

@ArishMell

My computer has two types of personal files: set A, (smartphone photos and videos), and set B (the rest).

My smartphone only has 32 GB storage, so I periodically copy photos and videos to my computer (which has a TB), then delete then from my phone.

Then I backup both A and B on a flash thumb drive, which is not full yet.

Next, I back up B in two places, the MS cloud (OneDrive) and the Google cloud. Both give me, if I recall, 15 GB for free, which is plenty to hold B.

Sometimes I also back up B on my phone.

My computer is 12 years old, and my phone 9 years old, so I do worry. Even that flash drive is aging! I should replace some.

ArishMell · 70-79, M

@JoyfulSilence I have five basic directories, according to file-type and their creation software, with photos being one. I don't have a "smart"-'phone, and though what I do have, has a camera it is very basic, so I don't use very much at all. I use a digital camera instead.

My main beef with Microsoft is not so much that it offers its own storage, but the way it uses it, and your PC, without even asking first.

JoyfulSilence · 51-55, M

@ArishMell

Yeah, I bet MS and Google use all our stuff to train there AI.

If I start seeing AI images that look like me, then I will know.

I think the EU has a new law, the right to be forgotten. But maybe Brexit broke that.

ArishMell · 70-79, M

@JoyfulSilence I have no photos showing my face anywhere near where Google or Microsoft can find them; and almost none anyway. I am also very careful to be vague about location, interests, holidays, possessions, future plans and the like; and will not use open-identity sites like Facebook.

It doesn't need this new-fangled "AI" either to endanger oneself.

I know of someone who completed maybe ten years ago a major amateur crafts project that had take about a decade of leisure time to make, from expensive materials. Proudly, but rashly, he put photographs of it on Facebook. This elicited a number of peculiar enquiries of its monetary value, even though he had made no mention of selling it and indeed has no intention to sell it as long as age and health allow. He did have the sense to ignore such questions, and block the would-be thieves, as such enquirers are, but others might have been caught out.

Brexit won't "break" anything the EU does, but what matters is that Britain adopts fundamentally the same laws, and supports the EU in its fight against Google's empire-building. I do not know the EU's powers but I hope it wins and fines Google enough to teach it a real lesson - which means fines running into many millions of Euros / Dollars.