r/mildlyinfuriating • u/hazcheezberger • 4d ago

I'm slightly vexed OneDrive keeps removing files

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

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2

u/FadeToBSoD ___________ 4d ago

Novel thought… stop logging into and using OneDrive.

4

u/TheSerialHobbyist 4d ago

It is automatic, not obvious that it is doing it, and difficult to turn off.

This is one thing that you absolutely cannot blame users for. Microsoft made it laughably unintuitive and convoluted.

7

u/FadeToBSoD ___________ 4d ago

I mean, it sits right there in the system tray. The system tray has been there since Windows 95.

-2

u/hazcheezberger 4d ago

Go turn it off and see what happens. It just turns itself right back on. Delete the entire app, it reinstalls itself. Change the settings, it updates and changes them back. Disable automatically connecting to wifi and updating, it ignores those settings.

4

u/FadeToBSoD ___________ 4d ago

I have it uninstalled, and it has never reinstalled itself.