Updates to Files On-Demand on macOS

Liz_Atems_elisatems, like I said, caching on an external drive is wonky. And unreliable. I'm pretty sure this could be fixed either by Apple making changes to AFP or MS fixing the bugs in their OneDrive workaround, but Cupertino and Redmond are having a pissing match first, and users suffer. I use Macs at home and PCs at work, and I have an M365 subscription, because my family needs the apps for school, etc. It's criminal that Apple sells their machines with such small, un-upgradeable internal drives, although a lot of PC laptop manufacturers are worse. At least those can be swapped out. I bought my M1 Mini with a 1TB drive, specifically because of issues like this.

BobD68, glad to hear OneDrive is working for you. It's been working great for me as well, so long as I use the default configuration. It has been no end of trouble for people who:

• Want to cache files on an external drive 
• Want to keep local copies at all time
• Want to make backups in addition to cloud storage

Many of us have HUGE libraries that need to be kept local as well as available in the cloud—this is especially true of photographers and videographers. We can't wait for large files to download every time we use them, and we want our stuff on our drives. I'm sure MS has bulletproof backup, but that does me no good if my Internet is down or if MS decides to give me a hard time about my account. I'm an IT professional and compulsivity about backups is an occupational hazard, but I don't think it's unreasonable. Keeping local copies used to be the default with cloud providers, at least on a primary machine. I use on demand storage for mobile devices and secondary computers, but I want the canonical versions to live on my own local storage. Backup is just that—another location for safety. I back up locally for immediate access and in case of an Internet outage, and I back up to the cloud in case my house burns down.

kt