Comment by bilekas
3 hours ago
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.
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.
You can change that setting in Windows so that it no longer has a 255 character limit.
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.
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?
>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.
I'd guess it is more about making companies paying more and higher subs than training data.
Standard sub gives 1TB per user.
Laptop drives are still 256 or 512GB in office work.
No real need to pay for "higher subs"
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?
I guess because the general hatred of Microsoft interferes with people's ability to think logically.
Downloads folder to the rescue, hallelujah!
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.
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
Isn't sharepoint itself a cobbled together on top of Microsoft Exchange mailboxes?
Plus some WebDAV hacks via the MS Frontpage HTML editor! Truly great software engineering and design.
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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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Seems to me that if you want to experience data loss, Sharepoint is going to cover your needs just fine.
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