One Drive (A Rant)

Zarathustra[H]

Extremely [H]
Joined
Oct 29, 2000
Messages
38,744
Alright.

Let's preface this with I don't use cloud services. Like at all. First thing I do when I get a new device or phone is to disable any and all cloud syncing and backup. I want my data to stay put in one place locally, unless I either manually copy it elsewhere, or set up a backup regimen on my own. I have absolutely zero tolerance for systems that take my shit, without asking me and send it places outside of my network. This includes not using any browser syncing between devices and disabling and deleting the OneDrive app on every Windows install I have. I think it is absolute lunacy that anyone uses this stuff at all, given all the implications of your data flying all across the internet.

Fast forward to today.

I needed to send an important work email. One of the attachments was too large for the recipients shitty mail server, causing the whole ting to bounce. I had heard that you can upload a file to OneDrive and share it with a link, so I figured, alright, I'll use it for this one file. There is nothing too sensitive in there.

I had to figure out how to reinstall the One Drive app. Then I signed into it.

Before I know what was happening it was syncing my entire user folder (Documents, Desktop, etc.) to Microsoft. I must have yelled an audible NOOOOO before I found the cancel buttons and canceled it. Damn. I'm already low on time, now I have to delete all my shit off of OneDrive. I found my OneDrive folder, selected everything and hit delete.


WTF? Where are the files in Documents and my Desktop going?

Oh FUCK. Its deleting everything locally too! I damn near punched my computer at this point.

cancel cancel cancel cancel....

Luckily I keep my own local backups. I quickly restored them. Alright, now how do I stop it from syncing shit, without signing off. Every time I try to uncheck a folder it says I jha e no more folders being synced and says I have to unlink my device. Fine, I don't want my device linked. But then it signs me out!? I want to stay signed in and manually upload my ONE FILE.

This shit is absolutely infuriating. Who designed this garbage? I literally want to nuke all of Microsoft right now. This i9s the absolutely dumbest design I have ever seen in my life! The number of liberties and assumptions that "yes of course I want to send my shit to your servers" involved makes me absolutely want to mass murder everyone involved in this project.

The number one rule of software development should be anything and everything that sends your data anywhere needs to always default to OFF and only be enabled if the users takes explicit steps to do so.

GAAAAHH
 
Jesus christ!

I may have removed the files from my onedrive on my local machine without deleting them locally, but now when I sign on using the web interface they are still all there!

And there is no recursive delete option. I have to click every fucking goddamn folder and go in and delete them.

Meanwhile the damn One Drive app is harassing me for my permission to wipe my local files, even though I have deselected syncing all bu my one drive folder locally.

This is absolutely INSANE
 
Is this a work machine or personal machine?

Work machine.

If this were my own shit I would just have set up my own SFTP folder and shared my file that way, and never had to deal with any of this Microsoft bullshit.

I fucking HATE Office 365. I want everything to be local and local only.
 
Fair enough. There's a lot of hoodoo in group permission settings that will auto store things to one drive and treat that as the master.

Maybe these may help turning off/disabling/stopping/etc. things.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...onedrive-f32a17ce-3336-40fe-9c38-6efb09f944b0


Yeaaaaah, but how else can everything be turned into a *-as-a-service? :rolleyes:

I don't have access to any administrative settings.

Because OneDrive's web version won't let you recursively delete folders I am stuck deleting nested folders one by one. This is infurtiating.

Are you aware of any way to wipe all content from one drive? I can't see it anywhere...
 
I had to figure out how to reinstall the One Drive app. Then I signed into it.
I think you only had to log in a web browser, upload the file via the website interface and sent the link (for the next time), you do not need the app for anything for your need from my understanding.

Before I know what was happening it was syncing my entire user folder
During the installation process it is really important to not do the blind next-next with that type of application:

onedrive-backup-settings-setup.jpg


During that step, if you do not oneDrive to backup and sync the above folder, need to unselected. from my experience it is not easy to fully roll back once it is done.
 
OneDrive's web version won't let you recursively delete folders
I just created a test folder, test2 folder in it with a test text file in the test2 folder.

Going back to the root, right click on the test folder, click delete, it deleted the complete tree.

Crtl-A in the web interface under my files will select everything, right click delete (or the delete icon at the top) ?
 
I just created a test folder, test2 folder in it with a test text file in the test2 folder.

Going back to the root, right click on the test folder, click delete, it deleted the complete tree.

Crtl-A in the web interface under my files will select everything, right click delete (or the delete icon at the top) ?

Well, that's not how it works for me at all.

If I select a folder that is not empty aand click delete I get a red error message on the right that says the folder could not be deleted because it is not empty.
 
I think you only had to log in a web browser, upload the file via the website interface and sent the link (for the next time), you do not need the app for anything for your need from my understanding.


During the installation process it is really important to not do the blind next-next with that type of application:

View attachment 401186

During that step, if you do not oneDrive to backup and sync the above folder, need to unselected. from my experience it is not easy to fully roll back once it is done.

I probably just clicked past it assuming it was a tutorial. That is probably what I did because I was in a rush. Never in my wildest dreams could I have expected it to result in this sort of stupidity.

It's a bad habit I need to break, but in the past it has never caused any problems because good software design has always treated default settings as "do nothing". If you want something to happen you have to take explicit action. Linux still operates this way. My brain still assumes ALL software operated this way, because that's the way it has always been (and the way it should always be)

It makes me curse Microsoft even more.
 
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Well, I went though and clicked through every single folder deleting everything in each folder then deleting the folder it was in.

In the web view nothing remains in my One Drive except the one 31MB file I wanted there.

I went and emptied my one drive trash folder.

Technically everything should be gone, yet the app still says 940MB are in use.

If I go in under storage metrics one folder named "Preservation Hold Library" still had a bunch of stuff in it, yet there is no apparent way to clear it out.

Any ideas?
 
I use Onedrive all the time. Let's me do work from wherever I need to. Great for mobility.

I've never had a problem with it because I don't just hit yes to all the defaults and changed the setting when I loaded it up. As someone said earlier, that's all you have to do. If you click through everything because you're in a hurry, there's no one to blame - that's PEBKAC not the app.
 
good software design has always treated default settings as "do nothing".

That a bit philosophical here but there is a good argument that for mainstream software that not really the case, if my parent back in the day blindly install an anti-virus or a firewall, should really that default result that nothing changed at all on that computer, should the default result of when they install the first browser in that machine be that it will not open html link when they click on them, if they install vlc should it not open videos when they click on them.

I think good software design can really be: Has a default do "what someone that is not computer savy want to happen when they install that software", the program I do act like that during it's installation has much has possible, not having has default setting the fact that now the file with our program custom extension are not opened by it or no folder are created in the user directory, would seem absolutely senseless.
 
Sounds like a PEBCAK issue here.

First, email systems are not 'shitty' for not accepting large attachments. Have you ever had to deal with clearing an email server queue because some dumbass admin allowed attachments 100's of MB in size that was sent to thousands of mailboxes? It kills the server. Uploading to a cloud provider and sharing the link in the email is the correct way to handle this.

Secondly, If you need to just send a single document, use the onedrive.com site instead of installing the app on your device. That app is more for keeping the document cache updated locally. While it can be used for sharing, the sharing settings are normally handled on the website version and you would just be sharing items synced from the local PC. Just use the website, upload the single doc, and share it.

Lastly, I use OneDrive and it clearly gives you the option on what folder to sync and what additional stuff, like Documents. So yes, if you are syncing docs, and delete them from OneDrive they will delete from your PC. The correct path is to uninstall the Application first, then go to OneDrive.com and delete the data. You can recover deleted items from OneDrive for a short time I believe.
 
Lastly, I use OneDrive and it clearly gives you the option on what folder to sync and what additional stuff, like Documents. So yes, if you are syncing docs, and delete them from OneDrive they will delete from your PC. The correct path is to uninstall the Application first, then go to OneDrive.com and delete the data. You can recover deleted items from OneDrive for a short time I believe.
30 day recovery of files is the standard I think.
 
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