Microsoft Forces OneDrive Users to Start Using NTFS

[Megalith]

Within the last few days, OneDrive users have found that they cannot access stored files on drives formatted in anything other than NTFS: apparently, this happened suddenly and without warning, so many are peeved. Microsoft has just responded to the snafu, claiming that “a warning message that should have existed was missing” and “nothing has changed” in terms of support.

“Microsoft OneDrive wants to ensure users have the best possible sync experience on Windows, which is why OneDrive maintains the industry standard of support for NTFS. Microsoft discovered a warning message that should have existed was missing when a user attempted to store their OneDrive folder on a non-NTFS filesystem – which was immediately remedied. Nothing has changed in terms of official support and all OneDrive folders will continue to need to be located on a drive with the NTFS filesystem.”

 

[grtitan]

Got to love how MS has decided to follow John Romero's creed and make everyone their bitches.

 

[otherweeb]

So winXP users screwed again? Maybe the better solution is don't use it?

 

[Frobozz]

So it's more of a "We don't QA on non NTFS, so it's not 'supported'." thing.

 

[MavericK]

So winXP users screwed again? Maybe the better solution is don't use it?

If by "it" you mean WinXP, I agree. The OS was end of extended support 3 years ago... Time to move on.

 

[Saturn_V]

I have a WinBook with exFAT MicroSD storage that's directly impacted by this. (32GB SSD for main storage, 1/2 consumed by OS)

TBH, they never allowed OneDrive on non-NTFS storage. It was only the brief Spring-Break of negligence that allowed me to move OneDrive to the exFAT earlier this year.

So it's more of a "We don't QA on non NTFS, so it's not 'supported'." thing.

Funny that they won't QA on exFAT, of which MSFT holds the damn patents on.

 

[katanaD]

im betting a dialog box did come up for those using non NTFS drives asking if they wanted to upgrade.. and no matter what button they clicked on, including the X to close the dialog box, it upgraded them anyways

kinda like win 10

LOL

 

[Armenius]

So winXP users screwed again? Maybe the better solution is don't use it?

I don't know what you're talking about. My very first Windows XP install back in 2001 was on a NTFS-formatted partition.

 

[Simmonz]

I feel no sympathy for anyone effected. If you're stupid enough to use services from a company known for fucking over it's customers, for being over bearing and controlling then there should be no shock. If you're a Microsoft user in any way and haven't been fucked over, don't worry their getting to you eventually.

 

[Betaboy1983]

The last time I used FAT32 was in Win98. I don't even use FAT on thumb drives.

 

[Simmonz]

The last time I used FAT32 was in Win98. I don't even use FAT on thumb drives.

Some people still use ExFat though. Not to mention One Drive is on the Apple App Store which should probably be removed now as NTFS is a no go on Mac stuff for the most part.

 

[Armenius]

The last time I used FAT32 was in Win98. I don't even use FAT on thumb drives.

I still have a few old ones still using FAT that I have no reason to change. I got a 250GB portable drive back in 2006 that came formatted FAT32. I think that was the last time I purposefully used a storage device formatted that way. I later reformatted it to NTFS so I could backup DVD rips to it.

 

[ChadD]

Seems like a pretty good advert for the competition. (sorry I'll take Gdrive proper mounted with fuse in Linux... or mounted in MacOS or Windows if required... making things less or to appear to be less multi platform friendly these days seems a bit daft)

I mean one drive has a mac client doesn't it ? I'm guessing not many macs are running NTFS. Seems like an odd issue to bake into your client when you have NTFS / ReFS / and exFat in your own house.

 

[Jim Kim]

No one cares about the 3 users affected by this, I know I sure don't.

 

[Simmonz]

No one cares about the 3 users affected by this, I know I sure don't.

Most don't care until you or they are one of the 3 effected by an issue. Over 2500 people have rated the One Drive App on the iTunes store which means I am willing to bet more than 3 people are effected just on that platform not to mention ExFat users.

 

[nilepez]

So winXP users screwed again? Maybe the better solution is don't use it?

WTF would anyone use XP?

Most don't care until you or they are one of the 3 effected by an issue. Over 2500 people have rated the One Drive App on the iTunes store which means I am willing to bet more than 3 people are effected just on that platform not to mention ExFat users.

Is there any evidence that this applied to non-MS Operating Systems? My guess is that it's required for Windows, but not on the Mac.

I haven't used FAT is ages. The only exception is some thumb drives (maybe) and an SSD I have in a device offload photos. everything on my PC is NTFS and has been for longer than I can remember. Even on XP I doubt I used Fat32 after I replaced all my old drives from the 90s.

 

[raz-0]

So it's more of a "We don't QA on non NTFS, so it's not 'supported'." thing.

I would expect it has to do with two things.

1) merging of the one drive and one drive for business clients.
2) feature implementation.

I know a number of the business features are implemented using NTFS features. It would not surprise me if some of the similar features for the non business accounts are going the same way.

 

[leathco016]

Whats it matter what the files are on? This is more or less screwing anyone who chooses not to run NTFS for whatever reason (I use NTFS on my internal drives but FAT32 on externals so that my Pi or any other Linux box can read them.)

 

[Lakados]

One drive continues to function normally on iOS and OSX so it seems it is limited to only Windows and the limitation is only on the installed OS drive. I have an exFat external that I use for transferring data between Mac's and PC's and I can still copy data directly from my One Drive folder onto it, and I can also copy data from the drive into my One Drive folder.

*edited for spelling

 

[LostManHere]

I've got OneDrive loaded on my work mac and it doesn't seem to be affected by this, so my guess it's limited to windows machines.

edit: beaten

 

[ChadD]

Whats it matter what the files are on? This is more or less screwing anyone who chooses not to run NTFS for whatever reason (I use NTFS on my internal drives but FAT32 on externals so that my Pi or any other Linux box can read them.)

Format everything ext4 and just use google drive.

You are completely correct though this isn't about what FS is on your OS drive... its about where your files are stored. Their are a lot of people not using NTFS on storage devices. MS should be bending over backwards to support FSs on their windows cloud client.... you would think the average one drive user expects that running windows means everything they own will just work.

 

[gunbust3r]

Glad they choose to tackle these hard topics when OneDrive for biz still has unexplainable sync errors and uses 2X the storage space for "reasons"

 

[Lakados]

Glad they choose to tackle these hard topics when OneDrive for biz still has unexplainable sync errors and uses 2X the storage space for "reasons"

I was finding the same issue I stumbled across a posting where they recommended disabling shadow copies on the one drive storage specifically if it is a problem but if you have windows backup running than it will automatically clean up the cache associated with the one drive on backup regardless of shadow copies being on or not. Either way turned on windows backup to an external USB drive on the desktops and to a NAS on the servers and One Drive stays the normal size now.

 

[raz-0]

Whats it matter what the files are on? This is more or less screwing anyone who chooses not to run NTFS for whatever reason (I use NTFS on my internal drives but FAT32 on externals so that my Pi or any other Linux box can read them.)

Because the NTFS file permissions are how they handle publicly readable, shared, etc? That's my guess.

You got a free account? The answer is fuck you, it's free.

you have a paid acocunt? Odds are you are paying less for the bit storage being superior, and more for the cloud feature set. Which in many cases revolves around MS tech and how it is implemented.

MS has changed their methods, not their strategy. All their stuff is still designed to force/encourage you buying into their ecosystem further. 365 as a cloud offering is nice in the cloud. You want to start using it enterprise wide though, and you are going to want to roll out an AD infrastructure. You want complete desktop integration, OSX will work ok, but windows proper will be the only one to fully support the feature set. Etc.

 

[otherweeb]

I don't know what you're talking about. My very first Windows XP install back in 2001 was on a NTFS-formatted partition.

oh! how time flies, my bad!

 

[bman212121]

oh! how time flies, my bad!

It's only right in the name... NT File System, with Windows XP being NT5.1. We'll forgive you though as XP did still offer the ability to install with both FAT32 and NTFS. If it was an upgrade from Windows 98 you'd likely still be using FAT32, but for a new install the default should be NTFS.

I'd absolutely love to see a documentary on how everything ended up going down at Microsoft though. I had to check wiki to remember how far back it went. NTFS has existed since the beginning of NT. When MS and IBM split the OS/2 project off IBM pushed forward with OS/2 and Microsoft renamed their version of OS/2 3.0 to NT and released NT3.1 with NTFS as the default file system. (NTFS being based off of the work for HPFS) So basically every version of Windows NT that has existed has had NTFS as the default file system. The only Microsoft OSes that used FAT were DOS, and the GUIs that booted from DOS. (Windows 1,2,3, and 9x / ME)

 

[CombatChrisNC]

Really kind of shocked that ReFS isn't allowed.

 

[ChadD]

Really kind of shocked that ReFS isn't allowed.

OneDrive Pro coming soon.

 

[jfreund]

Eurasia are our allies. We have always been at war with Eastasia.

 

[Armenius]

It's only right in the name... NT File System, with Windows XP being NT5.1. We'll forgive you though as XP did still offer the ability to install with both FAT32 and NTFS. If it was an upgrade from Windows 98 you'd likely still be using FAT32, but for a new install the default should be NTFS.

I'd absolutely love to see a documentary on how everything ended up going down at Microsoft though. I had to check wiki to remember how far back it went. NTFS has existed since the beginning of NT. When MS and IBM split the OS/2 project off IBM pushed forward with OS/2 and Microsoft renamed their version of OS/2 3.0 to NT and released NT3.1 with NTFS as the default file system. (NTFS being based off of the work for HPFS) So basically every version of Windows NT that has existed has had NTFS as the default file system. The only Microsoft OSes that used FAT were DOS, and the GUIs that booted from DOS. (Windows 1,2,3, and 9x / ME)

Weren't Microsoft supposed to have been working on a brand new file system for Vista? Whatever happened to that?

 

[lcpiper]

I wonder if you guys are remembering that along with the file system part of NTFS, there is a rather predominate file permissions aspect to NTFS. Is there any chance that this issue doesn't even show up with other OS's that try to use OneDrive and that it is only MS OSs that get told to use NTFS formated drives?

Someone see where this is part of the issue or not?

 

[hamm3rhead]

It's all related to permissions/security model, onedrive is meant to be secure. fat is not. You should be using ntfs already. OSX has security built into the fs. ExFat is good for cameras and CE devices.. no implied security when you can pop out the drive and shove it in your TV or printer kiosk at walgreens.

 

[lcpiper]

And if this is impacting any of you, this might help.

I have not confirmed this myself, I don't use OneDrive.


https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...-message/2ae3511f-7687-4d46-a135-9bf981648d88

I've found a temporary workaround to the issue, which is to replace the existing C:\Users\[Username]\Onedrive folder with a hard link (junction) referencing the user's onedrive folder on the non-NTFS drive.

Pointing the Onedrive application to the hard link at C:\Users\[Username]\Onedrive fools it into believing it's hosted on the NTFS (C) drive.

The reason I believe it's only a temporary workaround is that the coming changes to Onedrive with online/offline files (placeholders) are possibly reliant on extensions to NTFS, and won't work on non-NTFS (ReFS,FAT32,ExFat, ETC). That is only my belief, as I don't work at Microsoft.

See here on assistance creating hard links/junctions:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896768.aspx

 

[bman212121]

Weren't Microsoft supposed to have been working on a brand new file system for Vista? Whatever happened to that?

Yes, the Resilient File System (ReFS) exists in Server 2012 and 2016. There are still too many gotchas for it to be the default file system, like the fact you can't boot Windows from it yet. I think there are so many more moving parts now it's quite difficult to get something that covers all of the needs. ZFS, btrfs, APFS are all next generation file systems that have similar capabilities. I know there were still several gotchas with btrfs, and even ZFS support on Linux. It also sounds like APFS is going to be missing a couple of features that HFS+ has, so I don't think Microsoft is really ahead or behind anyone else. I think the BSD guys are one of the few who have a feature complete CoW (Copy on Write) file system.

 

[BulletDust]

It's ok though, as Windows supports 100% of the Steam catalog.