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Stop that!

I printed that and posted it at my IT workplace cubical. Guess what the new big headache is at work ?

Larry G
 
I can see why MS have done this. The number of times I see people with dead hard disks and no backup and who would not have lost their precious documents, photos and videos had this been enabled...
 
I suspect that some Windows users enjoy having something Windows-related to complain about. If not, they would have switched to a different operating system ages ago. There are enough to choose from: Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD to name a few.
 
The big problem I had with onedrive was that when I setup a computer it assumed I wanted to mirror the desktop from another computer. So I'd setup a new special purpose machine and when I came back it had downloaded all my files from some other machine. So I delete them. Then it deletes them from the other machine too.

how is this rational?
 
Maybe it makes more sense to yonger always-connected-to-cloud folks. But it should not be so intrusive for the rest.
And don't make me started on system search what searches web first before it gets to local files. It's just cursed.
 
I think part of the problem is the newer crop of developers grew up with the tiny storage on a phone. Get everything into Onedrive because local storage can't handle it. Or a few years ago, delete the documents directory from a second drive to save that drive for critical files. The idea of buying a $100 external hard drive that is large enough to store everything worked on for the last 30 years escapes them.

I am not opposed to the idea of cloud storage but the internet goes out far too often for me to want to rely on it 100%.
 
History is a good lesson on why not to rely solely on cloud storage. Internet outages, disasters, hacking, companies abruptly shutting down and deleting everything, sudden changes in TOS and files are deleted, "The Algorithm" deciding you have violated/offended somebody/something and deleting all of your stuff without notice or recourse, etc.

While cloud storage can be convenient, it should never be trusted as a sole source for anything, at best, it should be for secondary or tertiary backups.
 
Think of a large corporation with thousands of computers networked together with the additional load of constantly uploading/downloading redundant files to a cloud and what it does to local network traffic ...
 
Progress basically killed local backups, what do you use? HDD/SSD is not really resilient, DVD/BR-R is out of fashion and more and more hard to get, tapes even more niche even for this forum. I can only think of another cloud, some AWS (Glacier is pretty cheap) storage in different regions to spread the risk.

Some very redundand RAID?
 
A pair of backup hard drives for data* replaced every few years works well for me. If the computer dies as well as both backups, I am probably dealing with a significant natural disaster that makes data loss a minor irritant. The work solution is similar but the backup drives are in a multiply redundant array which also go offline with tape.

* I also have the continuously updated OS backup drive but some of the OS backup software doesn't always back up all the data files. I am old; I don't like the hard drive being plugged in all the time. If I do get ransomware, the backup drive would also get encrypted rather limiting the benefits of having a backup drive.
 
Agent Orange said:
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Yeah I had a hell of a time with OneDrive after doing a fresh installation of Windows 11. I'd never cared about it or noticed before, but I let Windows 11 restore my old computer's settings that were linked to the account. In fact, I'm not sure I had any choice not to restore settings, I think I looked for a way not to. Anyway, it annoyingly halfway restored some things. I'd saved my user folder to another drive and I went to drag Documents, Pictures, etc. back to my folder. It ended up being tens of thousands of files, and far over the quota for the free OneDrive. Well, it started crashing and locking up. I had a hell of a time disabling it and deleting everything from the cloud. Since OneDrive was locking up, I couldn't get into the settings to turn it off...

I like iCloud though. It's a clearly separate folder that one chooses to use and I find it quite helpful. Microsoft does everything wrong.
 
Even back in the day, I never liked the Windows 95 "Briefcase". And I seem to recall some other option that would make local copies of files from an NT home directory or share but make them look like they were still available when they weren't, and then weird things happened. Never made any sense to me.

I set up my Windows 10 machines with no network attached and a proper local account. But that isn't even allowed in Windows 11 any more. How is that even legal?!

I have to use Microsoft Office "360" someplace, and saving directly to a desired location is almost a backdoor operation... have they made it worse lately?

Oh, yea, at that same place everyone logs in to all of the machines using a manger's Microsoft Account, because no proper local accounts. And for a while Onedrive was trying to copy everyone's documents to everyone else's computer. Everyone else was afraid to change the settings to disable it.

I hate this planet.
 
Maikudou said:
Progress basically killed local backups, what do you use? HDD/SSD is not really resilient, DVD/BR-R is out of fashion and more and more hard to get, tapes even more niche even for this forum. I can only think of another cloud, some AWS (Glacier is pretty cheap) storage in different regions to spread the risk.

Some very redundand RAID?
Click to expand...

External HDD/SSD is a valid method of backing up, as long as the same data is stored in at least a few other places. DVD-R/RW media is still plentiful, but limiting. The more expensive DL media is getting less available, but is still out there, though 9.4 GB isn't very much in modern times with ever growing storage sizes.

I wouldn't really consider BD media as a valid form of data backup, as the drives never really caught on in the PC market due to cost, and the different data disc standards that aren't universally compatible. The base 25 GB disc is the most compatible, but when you get to 50 and 100 GB discs, the number of drives that can read them starts to fall off a cliff. The "BDXL" standard with their 133 and 166 GB discs have even fewer drives that can read them. BD sort of suffered the same fate as the Iomega ZIP drive. The 100 MB disks and drives were widely adopted, but when Iomega eventually bumped them up to 250 and later 750 MB, the world had moved on to CD-R/RW and those drives and media quickly disappeared. With Sony officially abandoning the standard they created not too long ago, I expect the BD ecosystem to start falling apart in the next few years.

RAID is fine, it just depends on how much you're willing to spend, and how much risk you're willing to take. RAID 1 is the most expensive with 50% of the total storage space going to mirroring. RAID 5 is good if you don't have a large number of drives, only one drive is lost to parity striping. RAID 6 is much the same, except you have two parity drives, which is good for slightly larger RAIDs. Though with all of that redundancy, you should still have another copy of all of that data elsewhere in the event of catastrophic failure.
 
Depends on what era your backing up for. For example: a M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD Enclosure is my choice, attaches to your USB-C port and I use a spare 2TB SSD. Runs $29.99 at the MicroCenter. (requires a USB-C cable which is not included). Also, and most importantly, stores out of harms way.
 
Flash storage suffers from bit rot. Don't just throw it on a shelf and think you have a reliable copy N years from now.
 
I use optical storage for smaller data sets. 5 GB should handle many years of email. Most of the projects I worked on also fit conveniently on a DVD so keeping an extra copy alongside the contract information is easy. I admit it will be difficult to justify buying another DVD spindle when a hard drive offers several times the storage for the same money.

My one long term test flash drive has retained its data over more than 15 years with tests every few years. Freebie 128 MB drive doesn't have much use otherwise. I hope guidance of how often an SSD should be plugged in to refresh the cells will be provided.
 
Al Kossow said:
Flash storage suffers from bit rot. Don't just throw it on a shelf and think you have a reliable copy N years from now.
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Al,
Not talking about long term archiving but only a sensible way to back your PC up in case of some catastrophe; i.e. virus, hard drive, etc. As for myself, anything that needs to be preserved is in hard copy form and locked away.
 
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