Forum Discussion

Iron Contributor

Mar 18, 2019

OneDrive Client, Files on Demand and Syncing large libraries

I thought I'd post some observations regarding the OneDrive sync client we've observed that aren't documented anywhere but we needed to figure out when planning a massive move to SharePoint from on-p...

limits

OneDrive for Business

storage

Sync

_Chris_G

Copper Contributor

Feb 17, 2020

dustintadam thanks for the reply. I was actually meaning the opposite and to prevent any local download/offline files using the OneDrive client and keep it as 'cloud only' access. This would be an attempt to prevent performance syncing issues on the client as well as the general conflicts/issues that can occur. I understand the trade-off would be to have reliable internet access. I basically want to replicate the map network drive and file server architecture as in the past but instead use the OneDrive Client and SharePoint online in its place. I feel this would prevent all the issues in this thread (until at least the sync client is reliable and fast when picking up changes). I suspect that is not an option and 'Files on Demand' is our only choice? I want 'Files Cloud Only' in OneDrive.

dustintadam

Iron Contributor

Feb 17, 2020

Ah, yeah, thats not how the client works. Whether you're using Files on Demand or Full Sync, the OneDrive client is integrated with the NTFS file system and actually uses a number of unique NTFS property flags to set the state of any given file. So in reality, something is always going to be written to disk in some fashion when you sync a library. What you're referring to is only possible in SharePoint and OneDrive if you use WebDAV, and in fact we do at my org so get people into libraries that the Sync Client cant handle yet, it's dirty and comes with it's own set of unique challenges but it does act largely the way you describe.