News Microsoft now forces automatic OneDrive backups — feature enabled during clean Windows installs, users surprised with desktop icons and files

[Admin]

OneDrive backup and syncing becomes an opt-out feature for Windows 11.

Microsoft now forces automatic OneDrive backups — feature enabled during clean Windows installs, users surprised with desktop icons and files : Read more

 

[Shirou]

Ah yes, exactly what I wanted, Microsoft having all my local files on their servers!!
It's probably encrypted--but like

 

[ezst036]

Microsoft now forces....​

It's a common theme.

 

[vijosef]

Giving your personal life to microsoft is the worst choice you can made. Microsoft has a long history of throwing the user to the trash, of changing the terms of the contract, and of having no obligations to the user.

 

[BTM18]

This is just not true. Installed windows 11 two days ago. Clean install...24H2
Didn't FORCE me to upload files.
Turned off one drive no problem.
What is toms going on about now? Click bait BS?

 

[rgd1101]

This is just not true. Installed windows 11 two days ago. Clean install...24H2
Turned off one drive no problem.
What is toms going on about now?

"While Apple and Google offer online backups on their devices, these are opt-in, and you can always decline them before either of them starts syncing your device contents. However, Microsoft is irking its users by turning on OneDrive backups by default"

 

[Dasboot5]

Easy fix use ccleaner and uninstall Onedrive completely or even better Revo.
If you need to backup Box is a way better option.

 

[tamalero]

Easy fix use ccleaner and uninstall Onedrive completely or even better Revo.
If you need to backup Box is a way better option.

Won't it reinstall itself on an update?

 

[OneMoreUser]

I think the EU will have some words for Microsoft about this.
Just like they are having words with them, about how they shoves Team down the throat of Office customers, using the weight to kill competition.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/25/mic...roducts-breached-antitrust-rules-eu-says.html

 

[Colif]

all my libraries are on Onedrive already, sure makes logging onto a new system and being up and running a lot faster. Any file I create is backed up. Been like it for ages

The 3 folders it does are hardly new.

• Documents
• Pictures
• Desktop

that is hardly a backup. Just don't use the folders if you don't want it to take them.

I have had my music folder on it for ages as since I get 1tb of space with Office 365, I might as well use it.

 

[cknobman]

Microsoft has finally pushed me far enough to want to take the time, effort, and cost to build my own NAS.

I have so much in OneDrive and pay a monthly fee to keep it there.
And allowing Microsoft to have full access to all my photos, personal files, etc...
Which in turn gives any government agency, or potential highest bidder, access as well.

Time to get my data out of the cloud.
The cloud has been ruined by greed and lack of trust.

Starting the project soon.

 

[bigdragon]

I'm uncomfortable allowing any AI provider access to my 2D artwork and 3D character files. Many of these files are enormous and easily push me into more costly monthly tiers of storage. I just assume they'll steal the data to train their AI. Why should I pay for that? Companies violate their own policies and change things unilaterally so often that it's not worth the risk. My own NAS is safer and NDA compliant.

Onedrive is probably great for the average home or paper-pushing business user. It's not for everyone and needs to be a prompt during install rather than turned on automatically.

 

[JRStern]

Since I sometimes create large files and thrash them for performance testing and optimization I really don't need to be copying those to the cloud for any reason, nor do I trust Microsoft to keep their eyes and hands off my data, etc.

This does seem overwritten however, as long as there is an opt-out somewhere.

Also, 5gb is pretty small these days, ain't it? Average workstation having a terabyte or twenty.

And what if I totally lost my ten year collection of memes, OMG? And all my thumb drive backups failed. SMH

 

[endocine]

Microsoft has finally pushed me far enough to want to take the time, effort, and cost to build my own NAS.

I have so much in OneDrive and pay a monthly fee to keep it there.
And allowing Microsoft to have full access to all my photos, personal files, etc...
Which in turn gives any government agency, or potential highest bidder, access as well.

Not to mention it getting hacked. Even if you pre-encrypt your data first, its likely it will be decryptable in the future by some entity. That, and if the internet fails, or the cloud ever goes down, people are going to be without their files for the duration, if it even comes back. Or, MS could simply declare you a non-person because of your social media posts or not liking your politics, or as google has done, because of certain pictures on your phone

 

[HaninTH]

From article:

"In fairness to Microsoft, OneDrive is one of the more affordable cloud storage options on the market at $2 a month."

If you're OK with EVERYONE having access to your data, then cloud offerings are just fine. You may have some privacy if you encrypt the data before letting it get sent to the cloud, but if you honestly believe any of the security these, "to-the-lowest-cost-possible" firms, then good luck with that.

Even if this service was free, the fact that we can not depend on reasonable security makes them worthless to most.

And last I heard, most people still don't even have better than 200Mbps residential connections, in the USA, and that's download speed. The asymmetric line rates most DOCSIS users get puts them barely at the 100Mbps upload rate, so how practical is that 5GB or more of data storage on the cloud?

 

[eye4bear]

I was just reading last night that Xfinity had been down for hours or longer in various areas around the US. Imagine if all your files were only on Onedrive and your internet was down.... BTW, I dumped Xfinity 2 1/2 years ago and got ATT 1gb fiber, best thing I have done in years. It has been down once, plus I get ~930 up and down, no slower upload speed.

 

[rgd1101]

you don't have to be onedrive only. we use it for work. active file are local and online. and move my older stuff to online only.
personally only use the online version and copy stuff up as backup.

 

[35below0]

Won't it reinstall itself on an update?

Apparently it only tries to sync during/after a fresh install. Updates are unaffected.

all my libraries are on Onedrive already, sure makes logging onto a new system and being up and running a lot faster. Any file I create is backed up. Been like it for ages

The 3 folders it does are hardly new.

• Documents
• Pictures
• Desktop

that is hardly a backup. Just don't use the folders if you don't want it to take them.

I have had my music folder on it for ages as since I get 1tb of space with Office 365, I might as well use it.

I haven't used those folders since they were introduced, except Desktop obviously. I leave them alone and they leave me alone.
When were they introduced anywat? 98? Win 7?

If those are the only folders synced, why are people fleeing to linux?

 

[evdjj3j]

One Drive wouldn't be too bad if it didn't use the same backup folders for every computer the user owns. I have two computers and if I allow One Drive on both they end up with the same files. One is my gaming computer and the other is my office computer I don't want them mixing files together.

 

[DS426]

I buzzed through the article really quick... I'd like to assume that Windows 'Pro' licenses aren't included in this debacle? I've found over the years that it's worth the extra cost if nothing else than to have proper (or at least better) control over my OS.

 

[CmdrShepard]

OneDrive backup and syncing becomes an opt-out feature for Windows 11.

So, where are all those nay-sayers from the other thread who argued with me that Microsoft Account was still optional?

Ah yes, exactly what I wanted, Microsoft having all my local files on their servers!!
It's probably encrypted--but like

Judging by the Recall initial implementation which was lambasted in the press? Not necessarily.

But even if it's encrypted they have the key so they can scan it for CSAM using PhotoDNA.

This is just not true. Installed windows 11 two days ago. Clean install...24H2
Didn't FORCE me to upload files.
Turned off one drive no problem.
WTF is toms going on about now? Click bait BS?

Did you hack the install to allow local account and skip MSA sign in?

Easy fix use ccleaner and uninstall Onedrive completely or even better Revo.
If you need to backup Box is a way better option.

I wish people would stop recommending ccleaner. It was never needed and it's not needed now.

 

[USAFRet]

I was just reading last night that Xfinity had been down for hours or longer in various areas around the US. Imagine if all your files were only on Onedrive and your internet was down.... BTW, I dumped Xfinity 2 1/2 years ago and got ATT 1gb fiber, best thing I have done in years. It has been down once, plus I get ~930 up and down, no slower upload speed.

If the only copy of your files is in OneDrive, you have already failed.

 

[Giroro]

The last time I worked at an organization with One Drive enabled it didn't just "back up" files.
It deleted all the local copies files, and slowed system performance down to the bottlenecked speed of a pretty poor Internet connection. Our local admins were powerless to fix it, and I think our engineers' general frustration with their unnecessarily slow computers is part of why they kept quitting...

I bet Microsoft is still charging that company a LOT of money to keep those files in the cloud too, because the alternative is the entire business is forced to close when the only existing copy of all that data gets deleted from Microsoft's servers if they stop paying.

So to me, One Drive is less like a backup and way more like ransomware. Only a fool would use it, even if it were free.

 

[Giroro]

If the only copy of your files is in OneDrive, you have already failed.

In my experience, that's just how OneDrive works.

Unless you jump through some hoops that your organization might not actually let you jump through.

 

[abufrejoval]

For my home lab installs, I use NTlite to cut out all crap, including OneDrive from M$ ISOs.

For my corporate laptop, there is nothing I can do.

And color me surprised when after deleting a lot of supposedly local stuff (somebody had changed default locations) which I had never intended to go into M$ AI harvesters I received a notification that even after I had deleted all those files, the cloud copies would remain for (a very long time) and not just sync the deletions.

It helpfully gave me a URL where I could then delete those immediately.

Then it came back and told me that in fact there was a secondary copy, which again would remain available for a very long time and provided me with another URL where I could immediately delete those files.

I'm pretty sure that there is a third level cache beyond that, because if you're spending so much time to delete three copies, that means you consider that data extremely important, a helpful hint to steer those AI bots towards the truffles...

Yeah, I can't wait for the EU to sink some teeth into that, but I'm afraid that with the potential right shift on both sides of the Atlantic, that might just turn into extra copies for the new political management teams...