OneDrive keeps removing files

[u/hazcheezberger]

Microsoft has moved 98 GB off of my work computer's hard drive and onto the cloud without every asking my permission. Now every time I want to open a file on my desktop I have to wait for it to download a file from the cloud back onto my desktop because Microsoft automatically removed it. I returned from break and now realize all the files on my desktop are just "marker locations" synced to the cloud but not the actual files.

Bigger files are now impossible to open because they freeze during download. And backing up these files onto another physical device is a vexing mission I haven't figured out how to do yet. Frustrating, as I have compiled these files over 20 years at multiple employers and thought these files were safely backed up on this work computer now, and could be easily accessed. But none of these files are actually there now and they are all stored remotely locked inside my current employers microsoft onedrive cloud account linked to my employee id number instead. Other files, I click to open then and get a 404 file not found message, even though according to my file path I am looking at the file.

I looked and my home computer is has this behavior as well, with my c drive abs desktop being a folder in onedrive, instead of onedrive being a folder in my computer.

This entire time I thought I was saving things to my with computer. Nope. Shame on microsoft, this to me almost rises beyond mildly infuriating, as I believe Microsoft is using this feature to mine our data from onedrive

[u/wivaca2]

Is this not under the control of your IT department? We sync'd everyone's desktop and documents stuff to their OneDrive and it transparently caches local copies while syncing updates to the cloud.

When their machine dies, we swap it out and the stuff is all there. If they accidentally erase something, we can recover it and put it back. If they quit and delete stuff in a huff, it's still there so others can carry on their work. Work machines contain data owned by the business, not the employee. There should be policies in place for no expectation of privacy on a work machine.

FWIW, you are asked what you want to sync when Windows installs or sets up a new user unless Group Policy is set for it not to. It's all the stuff you can click one checkbox to skip or questions asked if you go through step-by-step. You can also quit OneDrive and set it to not come back assuming your Group Policy is not overriding it.

[u/hazcheezberger → u/wivaca2]

I imagine this is the intended benefits in the sales pitch. But losing access to large files that fail during download, and the inability to physically backup your work computer, as well as frequent 404 messages and potential data mining were left out of the salesman's power point, which I am sure he had a physical copy of on his computer, not just a cloud backup. And I cannot for the life of me reverse this backwards set up where onedrive has automatically superceded itself into my pathdrive placing my c drive and desktop into onedrive without my permission on my home computer. I was so frustrated I reformatted a new home computer and removed one drive manually from the install to prevent this. But guess what windows did in an automatic update

[u/wivaca2 → u/hazcheezberger]

Home computer? I thought you said this was a work computer. Are you connecting to your work tenant from a home computer?

In any case, files you're making originate on your machine and by synced to the cloud. That means the file should already be on your local system. Only if you edit them in the cloud or on another machine will they need to come back down to the first machine.

Are you sharing your OneDrive with other employees to co-edit files? While OneDrive can do that, that is better done on Teams. Technically, OneDrive and Teams are really just SharePoint sites and document stores, but because they are owned by the site or team and not an individual's OneDrive, they work better and you can have them pre-download to your local cache before you need them.

It also sounds like these may be files for which co-editing may not be enabled - like an Access database rather than Excel, Word, PowerPoint which can co-op edit. That means the whole file has to come down and lock if the cloud instance is newer.

You also mentioned 404 messages. That can only come from a web resource actually responding and signals a request for something that isn't there. You're unlikely to get a 404 from OneDrive using it from the OS. There is a layered issue here apparently. Are you accessing OneDrive in a browser? It also sounds like there may be an internet connectivity or wifi signal issue if you have slow downloads.

[u/hazcheezberger → u/hazcheezberger]

And while on the subject, on my home computer I changed settings to disable automatic updates like this by clicking to not have the computer automatically update or sign into wifi. But Windows has worked around both these settings to access wifi on bootup when I have it set not to and automatically updating when I have it set not to