Slow OneDrive Upload Speed

[Ryan Schouten]

Do you guys remember the Microsoft demo where they showed how much faster the OneDrive upload was compared to other cloud storage providers. Apparently this is no longer the case. I have had users report that OneDrive uploads in the browser are slow compared to Box.com so I ran a similar test to what Microsoft did. OneDrive browser uploads in my test are ~10 times slower than box. Can anyone else confirm this? What can we do to fix this?

[#2]

@Ryan Schouten 

Please make sure your OneDrive speeds are not throttled. On your workstation, find the OneDrive icon on the bottom right > Right click > Settings > select Network tab > Make sure 'Dont Limit' is checked. 

let me know if you have any questions. 

-Ash 

[#3]

@Ash365 As shown in the video this is not mainly a sync issue, though sync is slower, this is an issue with browser uploads. It takes 4-5 minutes to upload a 1GB file that Box and Google Drive can get done in ~30 seconds. As an aside, I checked and throttling is set to do no limit.

[#4]

Is it worth even bothering reporting this to Microsoft. I've just added a 1.2GB file to OneDrive for Business which should have taken about 10 mins to upload on my 20Mbps upsteam cable link. Too nearly an hour...

[#5]

@rob_nicholson_helios 

Its not Just SLOW Upload speeds that are a problem.

Agonizingly slow Simple Searches are just 'not fit for purpose' with OneDrive for Business

When I search for files using Windows File Explorer on Windows 10 it is agonizingly slow.

I have an i7 6 core computer and running Office 365 for Business.  All My Documents files are within OneDrive for business… approx. 300 GB of them.  

All these files are stored locally as well as on the internet.  My files are stored locally on the fastest 1TB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2 and should take less than 10 seconds for any search… and this is how searches used to work until I signed up for Office 365 for Business 2 months ago.

But I cannot restrict search using Windows File Explorer… to ONLY search my local files?

This is a simple everyday task that I do many times a day that used to take a maximum of a few seconds before signing up for Office 365 for Business.

Now a simple search can take over 5 minutes.

This is because if you use OneDrive for Business…. Any search you do has t access the internet… wait for the search to upload… queue up the search command on some server in the Cloud…. And wait…. And wait… and wait…

Before any Microsoft Support person replies to say they have tested this using a crummy test environment with a few GB in size (or likely less) please test this with using a normal business environment with at least 300 GB of files and hundreds of thousands of files and many thousands of folders… and also a reasonably slow internet connection.

If Office 365 for Business cannot do a “simple search task” and restrict the search to local files like this, is it really “Fit for Purpose” ?

I opened a ticket for “Office for Business” and the workaround I was told was to “close OneDrive”… and then do the search.

Is this a joke or is Microsoft even interested in providing proper real world business solutions?

Is there someone at the steering wheel of Microsoft interested in fixing these problems?

Strangely the solutions to fix the SLOW Search should be quite simple. Microsoft should simply include functionality within File Explorer to restrict the search to Local files instead of searching the files over the internet. And secondly allow Indexing on these local files.

Microsoft know about these major limitations for many many months… but do they provide the fixing functionality?

Amazed this has not been fixed,

Dave

[#6]

Never thought about search as I rarely use Windows content search - never seems to find the file I want. Even searching for file names using File Explorer doesn't bring back files you know are there. I usually resort to PowerShell and Get-ChildItem!

[#7]

@DaveIrl 

Just an update on my previous post:

I discovered that Indexing had not been running on my OneDrive for Business folders.  I updated the Indexing to include these folders and the search now seems to be working as it should.

Possibly the problem is solved for searching now on my machine.

There still remains the problem where searching within Outlook sends the 'search' to the server for searching... even though all my emails are also stored in a local .ost file.

Best Wishes,

Dave 

[#8]

Same problem here.
Why it is so slow?

[#9]

I have resisted so long moving from Microsoft to Apple.

This past few months running Office 365 Business Premium has finally convinced me.

Only too often.... I try to simply move 5 or 6 files (no larger than 1 GB) from one folder to another on my super fast desktop... and it hangs... and hangs.. up to 5 minutes at times.

I am starting to investigate prices for a good fast Apple machine as OneDrive for Business is a joke... and no obvious efforts by Microsoft to fix this.

I am guessing that this is being caused by 2 things.

1 is a bottle neck on Microsoft Servers where they store all the OneDrive for Business Premium files.

2 is the badly written OneDrive code that prevents the local computer from simply doing the job... and just queuing the changes needed to be applied to the OneDrive files on the internet.

Is there nobody driving the Microsoft vision or customer care?

[#10]

>Is there nobody driving the Microsoft vision or customer care?

Considering how many flaws are reported with OneDrive in many different forums, it would appear not.

[#11]

>Why it is so slow?

I've just tested uploading a 198MB RAR file (so already compressed) on my home internet connection. OneDrive, Dropbox and Google Drive are about the same:

OneDrive: 1m 26s

Dropbox: 1m 25s

Google Drive: 1m 32s

However, on my home cable connection, upload speed is "only" 22Mbps so plugging 198MB and 22Mbps into file transfer calculator (https://techinternets.com/copy_calc ) it shows that the expected time is 1ms 19s.

What will be interesting is if I do the same on my client's internet connection where they get much faster speeds. Later...

[#12]

Hmm, now this is very interesting. I've just tried the same 198MB file transfer on a laptop which has an upload speed of 666Mbps. Here are the results:

OneDrive: 30s

Dropbox: 6s (yes, I timed it three times just to make sure)

Google Drive: 44s

The raw file transfer speed should be about 2 seconds so Dropbox really shines here being five times faster than OneDrive and seven times faster than Google Drive.

Now I could accept Google Drive being slower because that is using a free account and maybe they don't give those accounts the full possible speed.

But OneDrive is a paid for Microsoft 365 account so 30s is pretty poor. 

What this shows is that at lower connectivity speeds,maybe found a home, OneDrive is limited by your upload speed but once you get into faster business connections, OneDrive hasn't got the bandwidth.

So another feather in Dropbox's cap as that's also a free account.

BTW - an upload time of ~30s corresponds to a throughput of ~50Mbps so OneDrive really is slow...

[#13]

I do have to say that in my instance Microsoft was very responsive and we were able to pretty much resolve the slowness problem. I would say anyone that is having issues open a support ticket with Microsoft. With our ticket Microsoft was able to identify a couple issues in the farm our tenant is in and resolved those issues.

[#14]

@Ryan Schouten 

Hi Ryan,

I signed up for Office365 Business Premium about 3 months ago and have opened approx. 6 tickets with Microsoft about various problems.  I must admit most of the problems were due to their lack of information about moving from OneDrive personal to OneDrive for Business… which turned into a nightmare and I have lost over 5 full days of work trying to fix issues related to this. 

But there were also issues with getting archiving working in Office too.

There are times I just wished I had stayed using Office 2013 rather than moving to Business Premium and OneDrive for Business in particular.  But the functionality of Outlook using Exchange is good … so that has been the main benefit I am getting.

I have not opened a ticket about the slowness of OneDrive for Business as the problems are intermittent… and I must admit I do not have much confidence in their support people.

I used to work for over 16 years in software development and am amazed at the inexperience of the people they give jobs to who deal with their support.  ‘Inexperience’ is being polite if you knew some of the responses that I have received.

Do you mind sharing with us… what issues the support person identified that were causing slowness on your system?

Best Wishes,

Dave

[#15]

@Ash365 My settings are "do not limit", but it still takes me about 30 seconds to upload 14mb. My maximum upload speed is 1G. 

[#16]

Interesting. Please start your own thread. I need help with slow upload speeds, here.

[#17]

Hey, thanks for hijacking the thread, dude. Looking for help with slow upload speed, and now you've made it about search. Start your own thread.

[#18]

I'm using 1GB upload, and it takes me around 20-30 seconds to upload a 15MB file. Painfully slow.

[#19]

How about posting the solution for us?

[#20]

@Lee_Gordon 

Because Microsoft is clueless and doesn't care as long as the $ keeps rolling in.

Just uploaded a 1.45GB file to Dropbox, <5 minutes. Same file to OneDrive, 30 minutes and still counting.