I read this in Hank hills voice
Here’s something that I think about that’s weird. With onedrive, if you don’t pay the subscription fee, they hold your files hostages until you do. That’s called a business model, but when people hold their files hostage it’s called ransomware. Weird how that works isn’t it?
I mean not providing a service because you stopped paying the cost you agreed to for the service is quite different from forcibly destroying random people’s data if they don’t give you as much money as you demand
It’s not like they remotely connect to your pc and wipe your hard drive if you don’t pay up
But they have control to your cloud files and they can and will lock those files from being pulled from the cloud
Isn’t it the same with all cloud files?
Yes. You’re paying for the storage space and access to it…I think “* as a service” is anti-consumer but I really don’t understand how anyone could think they’re entitled to keep using a service after they stop paying for it.
You are abandoning your files if you don’t download them before your subscription ends. Providers aren’t stealing it and holding it hostage…
And they don’t make it clear that they WILL remove the local files without notification. While making it seem like the files are still local. It’s at best deception, but really feels like extortion.
The shortcuts to the unsynced files might get removed when you cancel but local files don’t
So if someone is paid to help you load your groceries, and then because you don’t tip them, that means they’re allowed to take the groceries that they loaded back into the store?
False equivalence. You are not “tipping” cloud providers, you are paying them to perform a service.
Let’s try a modified analogy and put you in the scenario…
You digitize cassettes for a living. Someone across the country sends you one and asks you to convert it to an MP3. You received the tape and digitize it …but they refuse to send the money.
Are you allowed to not send the files? Are you allowed to not send the tape back? The answer to both is yes.
Not a false equivalence at all. People before you created this platform, you paid for said platform (let’s say windows. You purchase a prebuilt pc, so the operating system and access to the services are paid for at initial purchase (key point). THEN Microsoft says "Hey this service is involved. Check it out. We’ll store what you need. Download and register here… Sweet! It’s setup you got your files uploaded… Now pay me and I’m not letting you see or use the files without paying me.
How is that business model justified?
That isn’t even remotely close to the same situation. Most people have never actually paid for OneDrive,they use the free version and then this happens when it expires. And if you do pay, then decide to cancel, that isn’t “not tipping” them, it’s… not paying for the service anymore.
If you load all of your groceries into someone’s car, and tell them you’ll pay to have them delivered, and you never do, they certainly can leave with your groceries.
What exactly can cause the free version of OneDrive to “expire”? A subscription for more storage can end when you stop paying, but I don’t know what you’re referring to.
Yeah. Not a good comparison
Sure, but you put them there, without taking backups, and then stopped paying them to keep them
So someone who works at a grocery store is paid to help you load your groceries in the car, but you don’t tip them. Does that mean they’re allowed to take whatever groceries they already loaded back into the store?
No, because that’s not what tips are for? But if you don’t pay for the groceries, then yeah, they should be allowed to not give you the groceries, because that’s how buying things works
But if you specifically agree to pay someone a certain amount of money to load your groceries in advance, then refuse to pay them, it’s totally valid for them to not load your groceries, because you didn’t pay for the service you bought
Jesus Christ on a bike
So you’re comparing things that have been paid for to things that haven’t been paid for?
You have neither paid to load your groceries, nor access to your files.
Are you a sovereign citizen by any chance?
This is why metaphors don’t work. Files are not groceries, arguments that apply to one don’t always apply to the other.
If you’re asking whether the rules for services you’ve paid for are different to the rules for services you haven’t paid for then yes, absolutely.
If someone is providing a service at no cost, they have no obligation to continue that service, because you have not provided them anything in exchange for anything.
“I want” is not a valid legal argument for having a right to something.
I’ve never seen this be the case.
For the most part, the files still exist in the local filesystem unless one uses the “free up space” function to unload files to the cloud.
Where users have ended a subscription, they have become unable to add content to the cloud storage, which is to be expected. I’ve never been unable to download a file, it effectively goes into read-only mode.
I mean, if I was running a cloud provider I’d delete all your shit the instant you stopped paying me. So them providing the option for you to get your files by renewing your subscription is more than generous. Storage space costs money.
How to lose customers 101. I’ve sometimes renewed my VPS late, but I think the “free” storage I got punctually got from my host is well worth the 10 years I’ve been with them. That kind of policies screams “look at our competitors”, because, at this point, why wouldn’t one go elsewhere?
You’d just burn yourself doing that though.
So long as you still have the data there’s a very strong probability the subscriber is going to renew in order to access their data.
Once you delete the data the subscriber is probably going to change to another provider that doesn’t delete things.
I’d rather have your business model because I at least know my data isn’t going to be used for reasons that I didn’t agree to. However that’s just an opinion I have on cloud function and storage
Why is that weird? With self-storage companies, if you don’t pay the rental fee, they hold your stored items until you do. That’s calles a business model, but if someone breaks into my house and steals my items, that’s called theft. It’s not weird how that works because one involves signing a contract and you have say in the other.
Ok. So let’s say you’re doing some heavy shopping and you’re struggling with it. Items are falling all over the place, you can’t keep it all in your hands, and you’re scared you’re going to lose an item. I walk up to you and say "Hey if you pay this miniscule amount, I’ll help you out and hold on to the items for you. I could use my one hand to help you for free, but if you want both hands, then it costs you, but the items are still yours. You have proprietary right to the items, but if you start to pay, and then don’t pay this one time, then I’m going to hold on to all the things I have in this one hand. Nothing is going to happen to the stuff. I’m not going to take ownership, I’m not going to resell it because I have looked at what you have and have gotten the exact same purchases. Just going to keep it so it so you can’t have it until you pay me.
How much sense does that make as a business model? Especially with companies that are getting plenty of money from other divisions where the service would be sustainable, but they just won’t. Just need to get more and more money.
In essence, capitalism already controls what you do with your personal data, we should all be upset about that.
And with your storage argument, they should absolutely give you a window to remove your belongings before they lock it. I know way too many storage places that will lock your unit the day after your payment date was without notification because they can get quick cash if they auction units off, so most storage places don’t want the individual to pay as long as the rest do pay. Their favorite thing to do is put payment dates on Thursdays. That way by Friday when the person doesn’t pay, they can lock it, and it’s inaccessible until Monday. That is some petty shit that businesses pull. The whole “civilized” system is set up to work against people with money problems. I won’t go into detail of what I mean anymore than I already have, but all you really did was point out 2 problems to try and find a comparison against one.
The biggest crooks I know of in my experience is cloud-share server owners, tow truck companies, and storage units
That is a very convoluted analogy that implies there is a difference between the files on the drive when there isn’t. It might as well be one big file.
You do get a window…the 30 days since your last payment
I think they’re all crooks but I don’t think blocking access to a service when you stop paying is crooked behavior
In your grocery example, is your argument that the person should just stand around the store, offering to hold people’s stuff with no compensation, and no fallback if compensation is withheld? I was expecting the “holding person’s” terms to become unreasonable but everything sounds just about right.
This person is the Simone Biles of mental gymnastics.
Weird how consent works
Fuck dropbox. Dropbox uses your data for AI training.
They had some backlash so now it’s a toggle depending on your account.
Cancelled them immediately because I originally was using Dropbox to store personal information like tax and backup passwords. And now I know they can/will fuck you over for profit.
Imagine using cloud services without encrypting your data.
imagine not creating your own cloud service with encryption by default
Imagine knowing about encryption and using a cloud service
& like probably every storage service the opt out toggle is an absolute lie
✨Nextcloud Gang✨
My demands are smaller so I just do syncthing to a server
NGINX autoindex + Wget + SSH fuckery (a.k.a.: “Lazy turd solution”)
Idea:
You can put files into selected directory for filesharing which will be used as root directory for NGINX. When you enable autoindex you’ll get the classic directory listing you see on places like Linux ISO mirrors.
That will be the file source.
To download, you’ll simply download from that autoindex page.
Uploading is, uuuhh, creative.
You have to also run NGINX server the same way on the upload side, either have them on same network or use reverse SSH forwarding, and then SSH into the machine you wish to upload to and download the files into it with Wget (or at least I use Wget) from the locally running server.Example config I last used on my phone as the upload side:
daemon off; events {} http { server { listen 192.168.34.217:8080; root /storage/emulated/0/LibreTorrent/; location / { autoindex on; } } }Yes, the indentation, I know.
I read all that then had the thought:
Rclone does all this with like 1 command line, doesn’t it? Recently was looking into synching my seedbox with my home media server and every guide was “use rclone and a script that detects when a file is added/removed to trigger the synch”
Even unison with cron is pretty painless.
Or git for some stuff.
Even rsync.
With wireguard or tailscale there’s heaps of options.
You only have one drive? I have like 6
What do you need 6 for?
Uhh
Mostly family pictures. Definitely not copyright infringement, that’s for sure
Even if I was a prolific pirate with hundreds of gigabytes of mostly decades-old anime across my several hard drives, I would never admit to it
The human race is my family, therefore any media I may have are just family films
That’s so wholesome
Look at all these videos of your step moms doing things!
Most of us don’t have a need for that amount of built-in storage. External drives and even USB memory sticks meet the needs of probably 95% of people. I don’t begrudge you your mega-storage system (I think it’s pretty cool), but I have a 1TB SSD and a 2TB external, and I have plenty of storage. Granted, I’m not doing anything graphic or audio intensive. If I didn’t have kids or didn’t have to work full time, I’d probably need more, but with my available free time and budget, this works.
I’ve got just shy of 70TB of storage at home. 4k hdr movies use lots of space!
We used to get more and more disk space until we got SSD. I hate modern laptops having just 1 TB drives and having to connect external drives all the time.
I’ve got at least 400 GB in photos, an 80 GB music collection, then the OS needs space, maybe you’ll have multiboot, and maybe you also want some games that somehow require many gigs nowadays. I’ve got 3 TB in my laptop and I’m constantly cleaning up to have some space.
Let me introduce you to our lord and saviour, the torrent.
I am so goddamned tired of all the bullshit “value add” stuff that is really just ways to engineer a captive userbase.
Considering one drive is just a pretty* front end for SharePoint. No shock it sucks.
*Pretty being relative compared to the horrors of SharePoint
My workplace uses SharePoint and it makes me want to gouge my eyes out. Come to think of it, all the Microsoft Enterprise products have that effect on me.
This thing breaks several of my video games. I thought I had gotten rid of it fully - but it seems to keep trying to default to it despite OneDrive no longer existing on that PC anymore.
Things like these are why I insist in not having an email associated to windows.
I’m starting to get a bit worried, is the linux clan sick? Where are they? They should have shown up no, right?
There was a new kernel update so with some time they’ll start coming through after finishing compiling
^signed, a Linux user^
For what is worth, when I posted I also thought “I wouldn’t be thinking about this if I finished setting up my linux once and for all”.
Time to install Linux
Ah yes, something that creates an even bigger headache for playing games is exactly what I need…
Proton is actually really good now
Idk about that. I put Linux on a second drive in my main PC a couple months ago and tried a handful of games, I don’t think I got any of them to work.
I know I tried baldurs gate 3, The Forest, and I think Satisfactory.
I’m sure that someone is going to call me an idiot for not being able to figure it out, but the point of the parent comment was that Proton is “really good now”, implying it shouldn’t be a headache, and if it takes more than 5 minutes for a game to simply launch that’s exactly what it is.
Make sure Proton is installed on the same drive the game is installed. I’ve never had a problem with ANY game I’ve attempted so long as that was true, and I’ve played BG3 and Satisfactory both on my Mint partition so I know those work.
If you’re running the game from a different drive then you have to get into symlinking and that gets complex. But if you make sure they’re on the same drive it should just work.
That might’ve been the issue, I have an SSD with all my games/programs installed and another SSD with my OSes, Proton is probably on the OS SSD.
Proton is incompatible with the NTFS file system because NTFS lacks essential features Proton uses. Steam will try to stop you from running an NTFS game with Proton, and if you get it working anyway, you’ll corrupt your game data.
See, the problem was not linuxing hard enough
I do believe you but it’s getting to the point that it’s the same or not as cumbersome as Windows.
Of course, you already have Windows and you are used to the nuances so you stay with it. But the nuances are still there, you can’t do anything about them and there are more every year.
For me, the worst part is that you (and I) paid for it, and if you go an complain they tell you to eat dicks. So, I switched long time ago but dual booted for gaming until Proton became a thing.
If you need help setting your games, hit me/us the community up we will help.
This isn’t really about the user getting used to nuances, it’s about the games getting used to them. People complain when a game doesn’t work instantaneously on Windows too.
Plus, going off the latest Steam survey, people mostly play their own weird and obscure games with only some hundreds of players. So much of the time, searching for game support is not going to give any results because they might be the only Linux player.
That’s not even getting into how much setup annoyance there is if one of your choice games isn’t on Steam.
My last Desktop Linux experience:
One out of two distros could not load levels in Hitman. Helldivers 2 generated a white border around the game and color correction was off. Dead by Daylight’s skill checks had input delay.
Some of these games had tinkering steps to maybe fix those issues but it perfectly fits the headache he’s describing.
Maybe you have not changed the documents/etc directory paths, OneDrive breaking games is completely new for me.
There’s a few games I play that have a launcher that lets you load mods before the actual game launches. The attempts to sync stuff in the doc folders runs into file locks while it doing stuff in that folder.
I had it working without one drive. Then something updated and I had to go into the registry to get it working again.
Maybe it’s because you touched the registry? You can rigut click the docs folder, properties, location, move, pick the new one, done. Forever. For me at least.
The registry is what fixed it.
There is a trend on Lemmy to hate on Windows, Microsoft etc. I get it, they deserve the flak. But I haven’t had many issues with Onedrive in particular. Is it because Windows has it preinstalled and tried to get you to use it?
The problem with onedrive is now when you visit your parents for tech support, all their important stuff is on the “hard drive called one drive”, since Windows now just makes it look the same as a hard drive on your computer. And once that hard drive fills up, which will be pretty fast with default settings, then it starts asking them to pay money, or their important files will be lost… at their level of technical skill, that is basically the legal version of those scams that encrypt your files and then extort you to unencrypt them.
For those of us who know what is going on, it’s only a mild inconvenience. Just gotta put less agressive back up settings on and remove anything from onedrive that isn’t needed. But think about what it’s like for all the people who would get themselves into that situation and don’t have someone that could fix it for them. They either pay onedrive the extortion money, lose those files, or take the computer to someone to fix it for a cost. Why make those the default settings? Why not even pop up like a selection of default settings with a short description of what to expect from each selection. But it would cost more money and generate less, so no matter how user-friendly it would be, the only way it’ll happen is under court order.
Edit: also for any of us that use windows professional, alot of these problems will seem foreign to us. Of course, all the predatory stuff is exclusive to windows home edition. That’s the one where they are agreeing to have a bad time because it made the computer they bought in the store look cheaper than the one next to it.
If it was turn on or off I’d be fine with it. But it’s forced and even the default if you go to the backup app. All your local files are stored in a OneDrive folder with subfolders like desktop under OneDrive.
If it had a standard API so I could use my NAS instead of MS cloud it would be amazing.
All your local files are NOT saved in OneDrive by default wtf.
You can create a local user account instead of a ms one when installing Windows, then there’s no user OneDrive can log into and it doesn’t sync shit. Furthermore, the local documents/etc folders point to your user’s folder, not onedrive. Even of you fucked all of that up, there’s tons of files both in your appdata folder and program configuration files that are not saved in OneDrive. OneDrive doesn’t launch with a “backup everything in every folder” option by default, that’s something that you need to opt in and enable after logging into it.
Honestly, do better with your system before complaining. Also, you can create simlinks into network folders on your NAS as you mentioned to emulate whatever you want so idk what you mean by “it would be amazing”, whatever it is you want to do with it, it already is “amazing” according to you for your use-case.
You can create a local user account instead of a ms one when installing Windows
While technically possible, it isn’t allowed by default and they continue to block exploits that allow it.
Furthermore, the local documents/etc folders point to your user’s folder, not onedrive.
Not anymore. Even without Onedrive syncing, the local hard drive root folder is now Onedrive. This is new.
OneDrive doesn’t launch with a “backup everything in every folder
Read it again. I said the “backup app” defaults to wanting to backup using Onedrive. Type in “Backup” in search box. The Settings “Backup” launches. Onedrive is at the top.
I just went through all this with a new PC install for my 80 year old mother in law.
Honestly, do better with your system before complaining.
How about install an actual new version of Windows 11 from scratch before making claims about how Windows works. Do it without using the internet to look for work arounds.
My biggest frustration with OneDrive is in combination with Office (on my work PC). You browse to a local folder and save, but instead of saving it locally and syncing to the cloud, it saves to the cloud and downloads, and it is slow.
Because it’s constantly shoved on my face.
I’ve found it to be unnecessarily complex, confusing, and tightly coupled with other microsoft products.
I’m a consultant with several assistants. I really just want to sync a ~20gb folder with those assistants. This is easily achievable with dropbox or nextcloud for example, it works exactly as you’d expect.
In onedrive it was always just a muck around. What is sharepoint and how is it related to onedrive? Why do different staff have access to different features in some folders but not others? How can staff create upload requests for clients? How do I avoid being notified about every change a staff member makes?
I always felt as though I needed to have some kind of microsoft certification in order to address this very simple use case.
I’m sure someone will be along in a moment to tell me how easy all of this is and how silly I am for not being able to address it. I don’t care. I also think it’s fair to point out that this microsoft ecosystem is incredibly powerful and the configuration issues I find frustrating are required for larger more complex organisations.
I get the hate for Windows, but I have to agree with you on OneDrive. I’ve been using it for years since they started giving you a terabyte of storage with an Office365 subscription, and it’s never caused me a single issue. It just works.
Onedrive tries to take away access to your documents folder. The new one it creates is very difficult to use with a terminal
Care to elaborate on “take away access”?
By default, it simply gets remapped from C:/Users/Username/Documents to C:/Users/Username/OneDrive/Documents and remains accessible through the %USERPROFILE%/Documents environment variable.
Not exactly hard to create a symlink if you need it either.
That is a trend because 99% of Microsoft products are shit
I just wish Dark Souls 3 had Steam cloud support. Like, what the fuck? It’s the only one that doesn’t.
It really, genuinely is.
I have to say, though, the increasingly desperate dark patterns Google is deploying to try to make me pay them for storage are getting up there these days.
The product itself is way better, but if I was going to pay to be subtly threatened with cyberpunk erasure I’m sure there are sexier options.
I’m fully going back to local storage/NAS now, even if it is significantly more expensive.
I would love it if I could find out about the API so OneDrive runs but points to my local NAS instead of MS.
That way I wouldn’t have to worry about an update turning OneDrive back on.
I would not, under any circumstances, want to rely on the toxic waste pool of a codebase that is OneDrive. I have to genuinely use it for work at times and it’s randomly decided to forget crucial documents exist enough times I just want it gone.
I work in marketing and have learned this the hard way: If you send news media orgs onedrive links to media content, they won’t use it. The link rot sucks so hard and onedrive is so poorly designed, they simply won’t use media from those links.
If it actually functioned as a separate storage space I’d love it. But it’s actually a mirroring service to bring all your shit to a different computer. So you never actually get more space.
The one (1) upside is that it’s preinstalled on most windows versions, and since our local IT admins refuse to allow installing other cloud storage software (like a nextcloud instance provided by the government), it’s the only one I can reliably use at work.
OneDrive isn’t really useful for consumer level so it being crammed down customers throats is dumb. It works great in an enterprise where you use multiple managed computers though. You always have the files you need because they aren’t stuck on the hard drive of a computer that you either aren’t nearby or that is getting re-imaged.
I run a repair shop and work with consumers on a daily basis.
I’ve had dozens of occasions where a client is about to be spending hundreds on advanced data recovery service, but I had them check OneDrive.com only for them to discover everything they cared about is already there.
I’ve also had plenty of occasions where someone hands me their “backup” only for it to be a blank external drive that they plugged in and assumed would “just work”
I would argue that Microsoft’s strategy is actually highly effective for getting tech novices connected to a backup solution that doesn’t add anything new to the to-do list. Windows Users really have to consciously go against the grain to end up paying for advanced data recovery services.
