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TheDudeNL's avatar
TheDudeNL
Copper Contributor
Mar 06, 2025

Weird serious problem with shared folders in personal Onedrive after windows 10 update.

Hi there,

 

Last week my PC got updates from MS for windows 10 , and after the reboot my Onedrive local client started doing weird things deleting folders and renaming them to names with -COMPUTERNAME behind them.

My setup is as follows: 

 

  • I'm logged on to my own Onedrive
  • In my Onedrive I have shared folders with data that other family members in a family subsciption shared with me. There is a lot of data in them, some have 660Gb of pics and videos.
  • I added those shared folders to my Onedrive, so I can access them in my own explorer without logging on to another account.
  • This setup has been working fine for years, up until this MS update...

I noticed after the reboot that my Onedrive Personal client was deleting a lot of folders from the local Onedrive folder on my harddrive, but only the folders that have the shared offline data, they were in the recycing BIN. 

I tried to re-connect the Onedrive but nothing changed, the online view in my Onedrive was still intact , including the shared folders from other Onedrives, but locally these were gone. So at that point I saw a different file structure online compared to the one in my own Explorer.

I then tried to restore them from the recycling bin, only to find out that Onedrive would rename them to 'ORIGINALNAME-WIN10' where WIN10 is my computername. It then started uploading all this data AGAIN to my online )storage, the 'shared (Gedeeld) folders were copied into my own drive with the label 'private' behind it, but that is absolutely not what should happen, my own drive would have been full within a day if I didn't break off this operation. Here you can see a screenshot of what was happening, while it was still 'syncing':


I tried re-installing and re-connecting the Onedrive client, and also removing all the extra copies of the folders online AND offline, hoping it would resync the whole thing from the Original online shared folders.  The shared folders just don't turn up anymore in my local view.  Instead the Onedrive client started renaming even more shared folders that seemed untouched before, and uploading the contents to my own Onedrive....

So to make it absolutely clear what happened: the shared folders that were only in the Cloud didn't turn up locally anymore, the shared folders that were on both sides were renamed locally and copied back to the cloud as a new private copy folder (as you can see in the screenshot). 


Did MS change something with the last updates that forces shared data to actually be taking up space in your own Onedrive, where this was not the case before? 

Or is this just something that went corrupt on my own PC and can I fix it somehow?

I can't imagine them changing something that has such an impact without any warning since it causes a lot of trouble for people using shared folders and also a LOT of network traffic if everyone with shared folders gets into these issues....

I hope some real expert on Onedrive can tell me what is going on, and esp. how to fix it?

To be honest, this seems a PRETTY SERIOUS issue if other have it too... ;)


Marcel 

 

 

 



 

 

12 Replies

  • DigitalAmoeba's avatar
    DigitalAmoeba
    Copper Contributor

    Found some more info on this problem/behaviour.
    From looking though busiest OneDrive – Shared folders can no longer sync locally since yesterday - Microsoft Community I found it appears that MS are doing a backend migration of OneDrive servers which breaks the ability to have Shared Folders syncing locally...at least while the connected OneDrive's are on different versions of the backend.

    Supposedly presenting a web link is intended behaviour while backends are out of alignment and it will automatically fix itself once main + shared folder are hosted on the same backend version 😔🤞

    Apparently this has been happening (so I guess that's how long the migration has been taking!) for some people since at least June 2024 Why is a shared OneDrive folder not syncing to my pc? - Microsoft Community

    Official info about this currently in the 'Important' box of Add shortcuts to shared folders in OneDrive - Microsoft Support

    Hope those links I found prove useful to others who find this thread

    • BrianS's avatar
      BrianS
      Copper Contributor

      Thanks.  That's useful.  Is there any way of knowing which accounts have been migrated and which haven't?  Or how long this nightmare will last?

      • BrianS's avatar
        BrianS
        Copper Contributor

        At least!  Onedrive has put itself right on my laptop.  I noticed this morning that Onedrive said it was updating or re-syncing 6000 Onedrive files.  It did this quite quickly, so I think it perhaps was just adjusting addresses.  I then saw that the shortcut to “Shared with MHMC folk”, which recently only led to the browser version, had disappeared from File Explorer, though it was still there on the browser.  On the browser, I deleted the shortcut and then reinstated it (which I’d done before with no effect), and the link then appeared fully working in File Explorer.  I'm very relieved, but I think it's disgraceful that Microsoft has created this situation.

  • DNM's avatar
    DNM
    Copper Contributor

    I have the same problem, it's an absolute nightmare.

  • One_Bean's avatar
    One_Bean
    Copper Contributor

    I have experienced the same issue with Windows 11 and now unable to access some shared folders on my machine. I have searched and can not see any suggestions or solutions to resolve. 

  • BrianS's avatar
    BrianS
    Copper Contributor

    Yes, same for me, probably occurring on 14 April.  A nightmare.  We'll have to rethink all our storage.  Are there no positive replies or solutions?

  • 4Fro's avatar
    4Fro
    Copper Contributor

    I have the same issue. but my wifes account has only 5 gb of space, so what happens here is that the online drive fills to the max and is stuck. only difference is I have an windows 11 desktop. 

  • ses8411's avatar
    ses8411
    Copper Contributor

    I am seeing a similar but also the shared  folders from my wife are completely gone from my account.

  • krishvk's avatar
    krishvk
    Copper Contributor

    Yeah, the same issue, it's not just top-level folders, in one folder it recursively reuploaded all files with "-pcname" suffix before the extension.

    Now it's a nightmare to clean this stuff.

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