Forum Discussion
OneDrive Client, Files on Demand and Syncing large libraries
- dustintadam This is a great write up. I am wondering if there is a way to prevent users from syncing libraries with the ODFB client, or maybe a way to limit what libraries are ok to sync with and others not.
Document library cleanup is something i have been dealing with for years. my thought is that if you have large libraries with so many objects in them, that it would make sense to start moving stale content to a different library?
Now that I am thinking about it, would creating an active document library and an archive document library serve you? For example, you could technically use the Information Management Policies to move documents that haven't been touched in X amount of time to an archive library, thuse freeing up the total amount of objects? With the new persistent urls in SPO, you wouldn't need to worry about links breaking.
Perhaps i am completely oversimplifying the complexity of your library. But if microsoft isn't providing a way to limit what you can sync to, then we would have to macgyver this out?
Nando- Hey Nando;
As it happens I managed to get in contact with the product development team and they’ve been working with us over the last month or so regarding sync and large libraries.
Long story short: they are actively making changes to the sync client based on our feedback and use case that will see the upper limits raise fairly substantially. In addition, there is a neat little trick we learned from the SharePoint product team:
If you don’t want to restrict sync for an entire library, but only a subset of content inside a library, you can set “Restricted View” permissions on a parent folder, yet still add higher permissions lower down in the tree. This causes the sync client to ignore all content below the Restricted View permission, effectively allowing you to segregate content inside a library that you want to allow the local sync client to bring down.
We have an NDA with Microsoft so I can’t disclose any detail, but large library sync will be getting better within the next few months, with more to come later in the year.@Microsoft OneDrive team
Hi Dustin,
many thanks for your write-up and efforts taken. Funny enough I do not have an issue with the Business client so I used Office365 with OneDrive privately. I have close to 900GB of data and over 400000 files (and this still does not count in my recorded TV library with another 7TB).
I am regularly having issues with the sync hanging and CPU loaded to 50 - 70% (on a 3.2GHz Quad core machine with 16GB RAM...). Restarting the client takes a long time before it takes up its work again an is only a temporary solution.
Since I am on a slow network (not of my choosing, it just isn't possible at this small village I am living in) files on demand is not an option. Also I really would like to have almost all the files on all machines (5 total) at all times (with exception of the Video and music library on my 2 laptops).
One thing that seems to hang OD client for sure:
It really doesn't like similar file names with the German character "ß" (which happens often in my Music library).i.e.
fussball.jpg
fußball.jpg
Similar names seem to be looking the same to the OD client and it will hang! Once I deleted the similar files (doesn't matter if I do it to the file with "ss" or "ß"!) syncing goes on smooth(er). This is a real problem in German speaking countries!
Maybe other countries have similar letters which also cause this issue.
Also it seems to hang often on my ".odg" files (Open office draw / Libre Office file format in compressed vector drawing format) which I use extensively for my renovation work. Highly annoying if you find out that a file has not been synced and now you are left with 2 drawing files (with 20 layers) and you do not know/ can't find out what you have changed on either of them... And we are not talking large file size, it is just below 200KB!
Teamviewer has saved my a.. in many occasions because of a mess up by OneDrive. For this reason I often leave my computers on all the time. Not really great on money, material and environment.
Which brings me to another topic:
Why isn't it possible for OneDrive to "see" what folder you are in/ files used last and sync those folders/ files with higher priority?
Enable marking certain folders as priority over others manually?
Or even better make a "force sync on this file" option available. This would really be useful if you are on a slow network or if you have to shut-down your laptop (sometimes due to low battery and/ or plane boarding). Especially in Business environment. I often had to wait around for 30 minutes or more to wait for OD to pick-up that one particular file that I needed on a Business trip overseas or wanted to have it online to share it with my colleagues.
