Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Everyone hates OneDrive, Microsofts cloud app that steals and deletes files

boingboing.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 239 posts

Re: Everyone hates OneDrive, Microsofts cloud app that steals and deletes files

#61

Post by catapart »

bell-cot wrote: post #14

Maintaining local, off-line backups is an endless PITA. But consider the alternative... :(

Posting this here, hoping desperately for someone to give me an example proving I'm wrong:

It's insane to me that there isn't a simple, GUI-based app that provides this utility in a clean, straightforward way. Basically just "dropbox, but let me set the destination to another drive on my PC/network/VPN (or a 'repo', for 'advanced' users)".

Just a plain interface that shows me my files and allows me to say "I want this folder to be backed up to here, here, and here". I can do that manually for every folder I want backed up, but other users may opt to backup a whole drive or whatever, depending on need.

Seems like a slam dunk. Frustrating that I don't know enough about the footguns with backups (duplications, cpu limiting, etc) to just write the app myself, but I have been looking at what the eframe and rustic libraries can do together. Feels imminently do-able by someone who has a lot of experience with backups. But maybe it's even passable do-able by someone who just knows what he wants.

Re: Everyone hates OneDrive, Microsofts cloud app that steals and deletes files

#62

Post by PaulHoule »

I quit using OneDrive early in the Win 8 era.

To point out how shambloic it was it was originally called SkyDrive but they were forced to rename it thanks to a trademark lawsuit. I mean, they launch a product that is so important to them that they are willing to make us all miserable shoving it down our throats and they can't be bothered to spend a few $100 or $1000 on a trademark search.

I was working with Word and found that it defaulted to OneDrive which I could have lived with if it worked. Except it didn't work and when I tried to save documents I could not save.

Needless to say that was the last time I used OneDrive. Microsoft doesn't get it

   Force somebody to use it -> It fails -> Somebody never uses it again
Third-party vendors like DropBox, Box and many others have made products that look like OneDrive but actually work and never make it so I can't save my work.

I have OneDrive completely disabled on my personal PC. I still found I couldn't find files that I had created with Word in the filesystem. Turns out even if you don't have the OneDrive service running on your PC, Office will store files in OneDrive directly through the API -- it's not hard to turn off (thanks Copilot!) but it's one more thing to be resentful about.

Re: Everyone hates OneDrive, Microsofts cloud app that steals and deletes files

#63

Post by samiv »

snielson wrote: post #57

I love OneDrive. I don't know why everyone hates it. I save things in OneDrive, and they are backed up to the cloud and synced with the other computers I use. Some computers are shared by six family members, each with their own MS account and 1TB of storage. OneDrive makes it so the computers can have a 1TB hard drive but still give everyone ready access to their files by not storing them all on the hard drive. If I…

That's because you're using it.

The problem comes when people who don't want to use it are tricked,.manipulated, fooled and dark patterned into using it against their understanding.

Re: Everyone hates OneDrive, Microsofts cloud app that steals and deletes files

#64

Post by CWuestefeld »

snielson wrote: post #57

I love OneDrive. I don't know why everyone hates it. I save things in OneDrive, and they are backed up to the cloud and synced with the other computers I use. Some computers are shared by six family members, each with their own MS account and 1TB of storage. OneDrive makes it so the computers can have a 1TB hard drive but still give everyone ready access to their files by not storing them all on the hard drive. If I…

I agree here, but...

If I don't want something synced to Onedrive then I usually save it in my downloads folder or another separate folder

My complaint is that MS has intentionally made it SO DIFFICULT to do that. There's a significant amount of extra clicking and thinking necessary to go through the steps to do it.

Re: Everyone hates OneDrive, Microsofts cloud app that steals and deletes files

#65

Post by juancn »

xyproto wrote: post #41
juancn wrote: post #33

Windows is not for doing serious stuff anymore, the only remaining use case for me is a gaming PC (if you turn off all the nags, it's pretty decent). I work on a Mac, I run servers on Linux, I game on Windows.

How many games do you use on Windows that you can not use on Linux?

It's not the "can't" necessarily, it's about friction, I could get it working on linux, but then I'd probably be just fiddling with settings way longer than I do today.

Current Windows gaming experience is almost like a console, just play and forget, (if you just use your machine for that).

Another potential issue is that I have games in all the major launchers (and a GamePass subscription), and the only one that works reasonably well on Linux is Steam.

Re: Everyone hates OneDrive, Microsofts cloud app that steals and deletes files

#66

Post by Rygian »

lostmsu wrote: post #38
piker wrote: post #10

Happened to me 2 nights ago with a document my wife was editing on my laptop. I booted up Windows, which forced me to start some process while I was half paying attention. Windows booted normally but my Desktop was missing that critical file. It was in my history? Check Recent documents? Check Visible in the file explorer? Check Desktop? No dice Try to open from the file dialog... error. The message? Can't get it fro…

This story is very unclear on what exactly happened and what caused files to be "deleted". I bet on user error.

This being Microsoft, the null hypothesis is "user error induced by intentionally evil UX".

Re: Everyone hates OneDrive, Microsofts cloud app that steals and deletes files

#67

Post by trinix912 »

jwnin wrote: post #42

I use OneDrive at work for all of my documents and have never encountered the horror stories I frequently read. I read these stories often enough where I believe there genuinely is a problem. But I do wonder why there is a difference for some and not others. Perhaps I've conditioned myself to live with its faults? I will say that the Microsoft Office OneDrive save experience is completely subpar. It behaves completel…

The problem with this thinking is that you can never be sure these problems won’t happen to you.

I’m pretty sure it had worked just fine for the users in the article too, until it didn’t.

IMO they should clearly encourage users to keep backups elsewhere in case something happens, but they’re currently doing the exact opposite: encouraging users to back up (and on Windows even store) files exclusively on OneDrive.

Re: Everyone hates OneDrive, Microsofts cloud app that steals and deletes files

#69

Post by bell-cot »

ReptileMan wrote: post #25
bell-cot wrote: post #14

Maintaining local, off-line backups is an endless PITA. But consider the alternative... :(

The main question is who is in control not whether it is off or online. Microsoft obviously thinks that users are not, and it is Microsoft. We should have been more careful with embracing the walled gardens.

For "off-line backups", I'm thinking air gapped. Or on a backup server running no MS software, and using a filesystem with frequent & reliable snapshots.
Post reply on HN