[kn100]

I got caught out by exactly this, and I'm not exactly tech illiterate. what made it even more annoying is by the time I'd realised what had happened, it was practically impossible to get the files back out of OneDrive (since I decided that this was enough Windows for me, and went back to Linux), since the webui does NOT handle downloading lots of small files well, and you just end up getting a partially complete zip file. I gave up in the end as nothing in there was particularly important. This is an incredibly annoying default.

[cromka]

I had same exact experience with macOS and iCloud. macOS by default enables offloading Documents to cloud, transparently. Problem is if you try to get those files back to store them offline, it gets very tricky very quickly with ambiguous verbiage and lengthy process that you never actually know status of. I ended up losing some files as a result, which came as a total shock to me. I was already in the process of moving back to Linux (hence downloading of the Documents) and this was final straw.

[shmoogy]

This is very annoying, but there’s a right click and force keep downloaded that reflags the folder and all items within it.

[cromka]

The point is it didn't work, my files were never getting downloaded in full, the process was stuck with pie chart icon stuck. Debugging this is not easy.

[Orygin]

Wdym, I never had any semblance of iCloud offloading my documents to the cloud?

Are you all clicking "yes" on every prompt you see? So many people saying MacOS does this or that, but these are never the default behavior on a fresh install.

[mikelitoris]

The vagueness is by design, it’s another dark pattern. “Delete all photos from icloud? [are we gonna delete the ones that we only keep compressed versions on your phone? Iono ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, you wanna find out? Yea, didn’t think so...]”

[cromka]

Yup exactly!

[lostlogin]

These is some weird bs there and it automagically sends everything up.

Despite stuff being placed on the drive, it decides to upload them and only have a cloud copy. I thought maybe it was me that caused this, then it happened to a family member overnight.

It’s painful.

[hparadiz]

I legitimately think this is exactly the type of thing that amounts to destruction of property with actual criminal penalties warranted.

[ProllyInfamous]

Add these to your PiHole (DNS blacklist):

*.icloud.com

*.apple.com

*.apple-cloudkit.com

*.apple.akamaiedge.com

You can then manage OS updates via <http://www.MrMacintosh.com/>'s instructions (requires USB media).

If you don't want to do this, you should still add:

smoot.apple.com (to blacklist)

...unless you like each Spotlight keystroke being timestampsent to Apple servers.

----

This will disable a lot of "features"

—OldMan (primarily Mac owner since 1992)

[kn100]

Oh and another fun thing! I eventually just emptied the OneDrive so Microsoft would stop bothering me. This was maybe six months ago or so. Microsoft confirms I am storing nothing there. Just a week or two ago I got yet another email begging for money because my OneDrive was apparently full. It was a genuine email, I went as far as checking the headers for SPF/DKIM. When I signed into onedrive, still empty!

[antonvs]

I suppose if you’re not paying them, your storage limit is zero, so if you have zero bytes there you’ve reached max capacity.

[jkaplowitz]

Pretty sure the free limit is 5 GB, at least for personal Microsoft accounts, not zero.

[antonvs]

Yes but that would destroy the joke

[BobbyTables2]

Isn’t there a recycle bin?

Apple has something similar. One has to delete out of the hidden deleted items area — unless they want to wait a full month!

[wallstop]

Anecdata, they might have had a system error. My Microsoft account that I use the free tier OneDrive on had the same email sent (you're over x% full, consider upgrading!). I suspected everything you did - eventually I logged in after verifying the email - nope, 5% usage or so.

I then went and deleted more stuff, but my money would be on a reporting glitch than a malicious money campaign.

[cachius]

A system error on a file storage system makes it even worse! But easy to imagine after the recent report on Azure https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47616242

[wallstop]

Sorry, what I meant by "system error" was more "notification system error". Not error as in "data loss", error as in "reporting".

[manwe150]

Myself–and many redditors–got this erroneous notification too. I don't think Microsoft ever sent out an "Oops, sorry, you don't actually need to pay us" correction though.

[lumiukko]

I wouldn't use the webui for that. Getting rid of onedrive in favor for a self-hosted nextcloud, I used the native client to download all the files on the machine and then moved them out. This also removed them from onedrive after acknowledging the "A lot of files have been deleted from your onedrive account" warning. Actually deleting the onedrive application was also not as straight-forward as some other users may want you to believe. Even now, I'm not sure it won't just pop-up one day once again.

[trinsic2]

I have seen one drive silently reinstall itself, I think it does this as apart of an office365 update.

[didgetmaster]

This is a common dark pattern. Go through the hassle of disabling some 'feature' or service; and it just magically reappears at the next 'update'.

Microsoft is just one of the companies that routinely does stuff like that.

[tracker1]

I setup cloud sync on my nas to sync my dropbox, google and onedrive accounts... I only have dropbox actually installed anymore as it's just what I mostly use.

I mostly tend to keep some important information synced to the others, for multi-access in case of emergency. I also have a bitwarden account for secrets.

I have a grandfathered outlook.com custom account that I still use for MS stuff on occasion, but I switched off windows for my personal use a few years ago now, when they put ads in the start menu search on insiders.

[jasonkester]

From their point of view, that's the product working correctly. The whole point of all these consumer cloud storage products is to make it easy to upload your stuff and impossible to download it. (impossible - 1u to be precise, for legal purposes).

iPhoto does this the best. Its default is to upload every one of your photos to its cloud and delete the original from your phone. Then if you want it back, you can just click on the one photo you want and like magic, it's back on your phone. Want it on you PC? No problem. Open the web interface, click the one photo you want, and there's even a download button.

Want all your photos? Oh. Well, you can just click each one of them then click the download button.

I mean, sure, there's also this icloud app that will slowly download your entire photo collection into a single folder on your computer, slowing down the entire time before eventually grinding to a halt by the time it has put 10000 of your 250,000 photos into that folder. Of course, you can restart it, but it'll start again at the beginning.

But yeah, that's the business model. Put your stuff on the cloud, make it hard to get it back, charge you to keep it there.

[TitaRusell]

I am in my 40s and prefer a old school flash drive instead of an expensive cloud subscription.

An elegant tool from a more civilised age!

[brimwats]

I am an archivist; please don't use flash drives because they lose data to the air; use hard disk drives.

[doubled112]

I wonder if rclone would have behaved any better than the web UI.

[t_mahmood]

Sorry if I'm reiterating known point, when the storage is full, API will stop working, so you won't be able to download files at all.

So you are completely stuck if you have too many files. Like I had. I used to keep pictures on onedrive, and used 6 user license. When the license expired, they locked me out completely. I couldn't download my own files! And the web UI is a crap.

So had to pay again for a year, this time I backed up all files locally.

[ValentineC]

> Sorry if I'm reiterating known point, when the storage is full, API will stop working, so you won't be able to download files at all.

This sounds completely insane, and I won't be using OneDrive for non-throwaway uses again until it's fixed.

(OneDrive is my Arq backup destination since I have no idea what else to put the storage towards, but now I'm considering my options.)

[t_mahmood]

It's not a bug, Its how it works, from my experience.

[antonkochubey]

rclone usually works much better for all those cloud storages with terrible UIs/native clients

[Morromist]

I too have seen onedrive do this to people who aren't super-heavy computer users. Onedrive is a menace.

[fhn]

you mean Microsoft is a menace. Microsoft has been tricking generations of people into using OneDrive. I hope nobody is dumb enough to pay for it and I'd create a ton of fake emails and fill it up with junk.

[ryandrake]

Microsoft constantly tries to trick[1], annoy[2] and coerce[3] users into using their software.

1: https://www.theverge.com/23935029/microsoft-edge-forced-wind...

2: https://www.cloudcomputing-news.net/news/microsoft-tries-to-...

3: https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/windows-system-components-defaul...

[fuzzy2]

rclone supposedly supports transferring files from and to OneDrive.