Forum Discussion
Files On-Demand for macOS QA
Hello there!
2.24.22 UPDATE: We've been listening to your feedback, and we've made some design changes. We're releasing a new version that addresses the most common themes and makes it easier ...
Okay, so since we have to manually download everything in our bright new shiny non-automated world:
- If I tell onedrive to make a folder always available locally, does that also recurse through the contents of that folder and download 100% of the contents or do we have to do so individually for every single item in the onedrive folder?
- In my testing, the setpin option listed here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/files-on-demand-mac worked so badly as to be useless. Specifically
- the /setpin option can't be used while onedrive is running, which means to use /setpin, you have to quit OneDrive, then watch it restart and quit every time you use /setpin. This is a *very* bad implementation of a command line feature. Literally makes it effectively useless as a way to speed up pinning things locally faster than clickclickclickclick in the finder. - Will the FileOnDemand preferences key documented here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/deploy-and-configure-on-macos#filesondemandenabled be around for a while or is that going to get stealth deleted too?
The implementation of this decision is to put it mildly, awful. I can't think of a worse way to go about this, and for no real reason other than "The OneDrive Team is very enamored of FoD, so you will be too"
I'm very sure no one on the OneDrive team has to deal with this in a situation with heavily metered, slow, capped internet access, and that limitation in your design decisions shows.
- gacarini
Microsoft
Thanks for the feedback. Regarding #1, if you mark a folder as "always keep on this device," that will apply recursively to everything below that, including new files/folders that are added. In the FAQ, there's a video showing how to do this for the root of your OneDrive, which has a similar outcome of previously disabling Files On-Demand checkbox.- And when I upgrade my computer and reinstall OneDrive, will it respect that setting or do I get to do that all over again?
- Jack_NicholsHi johncwelch,
To answer your questions:
> If I tell onedrive to make a folder always available locally, does that also
> recurse through the contents of that folder and download 100% of the contents
> or do we have to do so individually for every single item in the onedrive folder?
The setting applies to the folder and all of its children. This is true on all of our platforms.
> the /setpin option can't be used while onedrive is running, which means to use
> /setpin, you have to quit OneDrive, then watch it restart and quit every time you
> use /setpin.
Interesting - this code hasn't changed in a while, other than a minor update to support this update, but we'll take a look.
> Will the FileOnDemand preferences key documented here:
> https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/deploy-and-configure-on-macos#filesondemandenabled
> be around for a while or is that going to get stealth deleted too?
This key is no longer supported. We'll update the documentation. cc gacarini
JackWhen trying to keep all files locally, only getting an error, unable to to load some helper program.
This has been such a terrible waste of our time.
- AAARGh - Jack_Nichols it is worse than I thought. I didn't get ANY work done yesterday as I was fighting this problem, but I thought I was there.
However now I try and get back to work git doesn't work at all. It showed everything as changed, which I just committed, but now I cannot make ANY subsequent commits, it just crashes out with Git: fatal: cannot lock ref 'HEAD':
So now I have to move EVERYTHING out of OneDrive. I know this works in Dropbox. WHY HAVE YOU DONE THIS TO US???
Seriously - very seriously - I want to actually talk to someone there. Can you give me a name of someone I can call? And I don't mean support - they haven't even been made aware of these issues (not that they'd have a clue anyway).
- Yeah, /setpin was literally worse than manually downloading every file from the web ui and copying it all over manually.
And of course you’re going to disable the key. Because why would you want OneDrive to not be a complete nightmare in a bandwidth-restricted situation for people who have to have their files local.
You know, so they can be properly backed up. Which by the way, your insistence on fod breaks every backup system on the planet, and no, OneDrive is not a proper backup solution. Man, I can’t wait until someone discovers that FOD means the only way to backup anywhere that isn’t OneDrive is to manually download the file. That’ll be awesome.
I mean for me to watch. It’ll be less than awesome for you when someone discovers that fod means once they deleted it off of OneDrive and your short retention expires, that file they thought they’d backed up wasn’t and now it’s gone forever. Good job.
