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OneDrive data now has an expiry date

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Re: OneDrive data now has an expiry date

#21
post #18

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 fi…

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.

Re: OneDrive data now has an expiry date

#22
post #16
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make it sound way simpler than it is. Their ToS are probably written in a way they are fully protected in cases like this.

[flagged]

There's always an excuse, or perhaps someone who actually went through it might be aware of the process and limitations better than your surface level assumptions?

Re: OneDrive data now has an expiry date

#23

F OneDrive. They locked me out without any explanation and without any notificaiton, ended my subscription and I lost valuable photos forever. Stay away from it if you are looking for storage for any reason.

Indeed, they are probably one of the worst cloud "storage" services ever to exist.

I also lost data on their platform. Not sure why anyone would like to still use them. This follows a pattern of Microsoft mishandling their user's data. They even routinely delete code hosted on their servers when they shutdown services without handling the migration well.

I'm building a digital document archive organizer platform that relies on users' own local machine storage and their cloud storage, and the only provider I trust to support are s3-compatible storage and Google drive (much as I'm wary of Google, Gdrive is reliable). Dropbox, Box, etc are also ok, but the storage is kind of expensive.

I would never support OneDrive.

Re: OneDrive data now has an expiry date

#24
post #18

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 fi…

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'r…

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.

Re: OneDrive data now has an expiry date

#26
post #18

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 fi…

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.

Re: OneDrive data now has an expiry date

#27
Retention and legal holds: Data can still be deleted even if a retention policy or legal hold is in place, unless licensing or billing is restored first. Do not rely on holds alone to protect unlicensed data.

Surprising it doesn't automatically move into an admin or company lawyer's drive so it can be dealt with rather then a few notifications which will probably be missed and the data permanently deleted.

Re: OneDrive data now has an expiry date

#29
post #27

Retention and legal holds: Data can still be deleted even if a retention policy or legal hold is in place, unless licensing or billing is restored first. Do not rely on holds alone to protect unlicensed data. Surprising it doesn't automatically move into an admin or company lawyer's drive so it can be dealt with rather then a few notifications which will probably be missed and the data permanently deleted.

Don’t worry, you have ~30 days, that should be enough for you to audit your entire org. /s

Re: OneDrive data now has an expiry date

#30

> Let me paint a familiar picture. Someone leaves your organisation, or a licence gets removed as part of a cost-saving exercise. That's a rather weird way of phrasing it. It almost suggested that you shouldn't audit your license needs. Other than this was always the case, it's hard to see why data stored in a close account wouldn't get deleted.

It's LLM phraseology.

It comes up with a scenario where it could be a problem ( license removal ), and then it generates why a license might get removed ( "cost-saving" ).

It's not a person thinking, so there's no real thought to whether it is really a likely scenario, it's just something that sounds plausible.

I read too many blogs, I've come to spot these phrases that trip a feeling of, "Wait, do people really do that?".

You'll still have someone along in the comments to suggest that this article isn't AI slop, and that people really do remove individual one-drive licenses from active people in an organisation to cut costs, that this is just "edited" by AI, etc.

But it's slop from start to finish. Or in LLM speak, "The slop is real".

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