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No I don't want to turn on Windows Backup with One Drive

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Re: No I don't want to turn on Windows Backup with One Drive

#71
post #4

This stuff is increasingly normalized across platforms. I'd say "vote with your wallet", but when all the tech platforms are doing it, there's not much choice. PCs / laptops are probably the last hold out: Just switch to Linux (but be careful which distro you pick) or MacOS (for now). The political pendulum is going to swing far left in the US given the disasters that are playing out in DC. Hopefully this sort of cra…

macOS is absolutely awful about iCloud nag. If you try and use a Mac without an iCloud account, you'll get neverending popups and notifications begging you to go online. It's nearly as bad as Windows. Neither GNOME nor KDE get anywhere near as bad. It's really only these commercial "holier than thou" operating systems that think they know best.

I haven't experienced this but I see you're the second comment pointing that out. I've been using macbooks for work for a long time and never once used iCloud nor do I remember seeing a confusing prompt. But I also rarely upgrade my machine.

With Windows, a regular seemingly normal update appeared almost as if I was upgrading from Windows 10 to Windows 11 and it prompted me to do the backup to OneDrive. I accepted it because I was worried the update to Windows 11 would get screwed up. After the update completed it was just a normal update after all and there was no need for me to accept that onedrive backup!

Re: No I don't want to turn on Windows Backup with One Drive

#72
post #13
post #4

This stuff is increasingly normalized across platforms. I'd say "vote with your wallet", but when all the tech platforms are doing it, there's not much choice. PCs / laptops are probably the last hold out: Just switch to Linux (but be careful which distro you pick) or MacOS (for now). The political pendulum is going to swing far left in the US given the disasters that are playing out in DC. Hopefully this sort of cra…

IMHO Linux Mint keeps being the strongest option to recommend when the intention is a clean transition with the least amount of fiddling. It just works, it is reliable, and it doesn't play games with changes of basic technologies that can only cause confusion (e.g. none of the Ubuntu shenanigans like their confusing desktop or their non-Debian packaging)

Linux Mint is terrible. Horribly outdated software, how are they still on X11? Both their DEs are forks which introduces problems...

Like, in regular Gnome/KDE land, you have Wayland which is a huge improvement over X11, HDR works, fractional scaling works... None of that works on Mint.

Re: No I don't want to turn on Windows Backup with One Drive

#73

OP doesn’t say why they are against free cloud backup, and it doesn’t matter, but (like everything else in Windows) there’s a registry setting you could change to disable the notification. I think it is ` HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Notifications\ Settings\Microsoft.SkyDrive.Desktop\Enabled = 0 (DWORD) ` https://www.urtech.ca/2018/03/solved-gpos-to-disable-notific...

Hmm, I wonder if this setting can be 'read only' for the admin, or if MS tries to update it with the SYSTEM user.

Re: No I don't want to turn on Windows Backup with One Drive

#74
Last time I tried to restore a file from a customer's onedrive it just failed with a variety of 500 errors or just blank pages. The reason I was trying to restore it was because windows had moved all of their files into onedrive without their informed consent and (at least) this one was no longer accessible.

onedrive is not a backup: like all automatic sync systems it is a liability. It may be useful but it is still a liability.

Re: No I don't want to turn on Windows Backup with One Drive

#75

May i suggest some solutions? :-P -> https://endof10.org/ (it has a map with people who can help install Linux) -> https://www.opensuse.org/ (what i'm using on my PCs, works fine for the most part[0]) -> https://www.linuxmint.com/ (people seem to like this) -> https://bazzite.gg/ (seems to be popular with gamers) -> https://www.debian.org/ (almost everything is based on this :-P) [0] for the most part because nothing…

In addition, and there are a few of these floating around but this is my devloater of choice, may I suggest https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat ?

Despite the fact that it mostly runs in powershell, it still has a better UX then the majority of Microsoft apps. (Except for the confusion about their only GUI pop-up window, you put a check mark next to the built-in apps you want removed, which was led me to reread the instructions to make sure I had it right the first time I used it).

It has both built-in sane default for people who just want to debloat Windows 10/11, along with a "custom" option which takes less than 60 seconds to get through but gives you all the customizability you need.

(No connection with the author except mad respect.)

—sent from my Linux desktop, but alas..

Re: No I don't want to turn on Windows Backup with One Drive

#76
post #2

Instead of Windows Backup (which relies on M$ OneDrive), you can enable (in Control panel settings) and use Windows File History. File History is a backup feature in Windows that automatically saves copies of your files from specific folders, like Documents and Pictures, to an external drive or network location. It allows you to restore previous versions of your files if they are lost or damaged. To enable File Histo…

Ironically File History silently ignores all the contents of any onedrive folders when backing up.

Re: No I don't want to turn on Windows Backup with One Drive

#78

May i suggest some solutions? :-P -> https://endof10.org/ (it has a map with people who can help install Linux) -> https://www.opensuse.org/ (what i'm using on my PCs, works fine for the most part[0]) -> https://www.linuxmint.com/ (people seem to like this) -> https://bazzite.gg/ (seems to be popular with gamers) -> https://www.debian.org/ (almost everything is based on this :-P) [0] for the most part because nothing…

My main reasons for using Windows right now are: - Davinci Resolve - Adobe suite - AutoHotkey scripts, lots of them - Microsoft Office, mainly PowerPoint, Excel and Word for creating and interacting with other companies' docs. Libre/OpenOffice mangled them/were missing features I depend on - Issues with my laptop's Nvidia card (screen tearing etc.) last time I tried to switch, and rabbit holes that I don't have time…

Davinci Resolve has official support for Linux

Re: No I don't want to turn on Windows Backup with One Drive

#79
post #52
post #36

I used to use Windows Backup with One Drive years ago but it just really pissed me off, especially with how My Documents is handled. There was that time I discovered several GB of screenshots had been automatically saved to My Pictures from some setting they snuck into the printscreen screen grab tool and then that of course those were automatically uploaded to the cloud. After disabling the option it would sometimes…

I agree, nowadays Linux seems like the only reliable solution. Even macOS, with the latest "liquid glass" update, feels like a toy for kids. I just wish the Affinity suite would be available for Linux too.

> feels like a toy for kids.

I wish unserious complaining like this wasn't mixed with actual technical criticism of software.

Re: No I don't want to turn on Windows Backup with One Drive

#80
post #37
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does iOS constantly (multiple times a day) spam you if you don't enable backup? (I've had it turned on for so long that I honestly don't know what they do.)

I’ve never enabled iCloud backups and it has never pestered me about it after the initial iPhone setup process (the modern version of which doesn't even pester me then since it copies the setting from my last iPhone). I backup locally to my mac, which admittedly they made require a password each time now, which is a bit annoying, but it’s not asking me to enable icloud backups regardless.

They have always required a password for encrypted backups, do they now require for all local backups? Or is unencrypted not an option anymore?
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