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Data Storage Microsoft Operating Systems Software Windows Technology

OneDrive Has Stopped Working On Non-NTFS Drives (arstechnica.com) 130

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: OneDrive users around the world have been upset to discover that with its latest update, Microsoft's cloud file syncing and storage system no longer works with anything other than disks formatted with the NTFS file system. Both older file systems, such as FAT32 and exFAT, and newer ones, such as ReFS, will now provoke an error message when OneDrive starts up. To continue to use the software, files will have to be stored on an NTFS volume. While FAT disks can be converted, ReFS volumes must be reformatted and wiped. This has left various OneDrive users unhappy. While NTFS is the default file system in Windows, people using SD cards to extend the storage on small laptops and tablets will typically use exFAT. Similarly, people using Storage Spaces to manage large, redundant storage volumes will often use ReFS. The new policy doesn't change anything for most Windows users, but those at the margins will feel hard done by. Microsoft said in a statement that it "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." According to Ars, Microsoft's position, apparently, is that OneDrive should always have warned about these usage scenarios and that it's only a bug or an oversight that allowed non-NTFS volumes to work.
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OneDrive Has Stopped Working On Non-NTFS Drives

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  • Office Space (Score:5, Insightful)

    by almitydave ( 2452422 ) on Thursday July 06, 2017 @04:24PM (#54759649)

    "We... fixed the glitch."

    • by alexhs ( 877055 )

      Or a schrödingbug [catb.org] that they triggered but didn't fix.

      A design or implementation bug in a program that doesn't manifest until someone reading source or using the program in an unusual way notices that it never should have worked, at which point the program promptly stops working for everybody until fixed.

      • Except that making it stop working is their fix...
        It's not like they only want Windows users, so what does forcing an NTFS drive format on people get them, marketable data of some sort?
        Then again it might be totally innocent.
        Hey I got that out with nothing splattered on the screen or anything!
      • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Hey wait up, what about this https://itunes.apple.com/au/ap... [apple.com] taking into account this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] or this https://play.google.com/store/... [google.com] taking into account this https://arstechnica.com/inform... [arstechnica.com]. So basically just another way to fuck over prior to windows anal probe 10 users who did not default to NTFS because apparently M$ fucking lie onedrive works with a whole bunch of file systems, just not particular M$ file systems.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          It appears that OneDrive needs to store metadata. Apple's filesystem allows that, NTFS allows that, on Android I presume they must be using some kind of database to store it.

          So they could use the database method on FAT filesystems, but then they would have to support and test it. For the 7 people running OneDrive on a FAT filesystem for some reason, it's not really worth supporting.

          Obligatory XKCD [xkcd.com].

          • Yeah, but I bet there's more than 7 people running OneDrive on ExFat filesystems (don't know about how popular ReFs is).
            This smells of a dick move by Microsoft. The eleven-thousandth one since releasing Windows 10.
            • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              Oh, it's a dick move alright.

            • by Desler ( 1608317 )

              But 99% or more are using NTFS on Windows. Other than a couple of neckbeards everyone else switched to NTFS when hard drives grew past 32GB.

              • by tepples ( 727027 )

                Other than a couple of neckbeards everyone else switched to NTFS when hard drives grew past 32GB.

                Except for those people who switched from hard drives to a combination of internal eMMC and an SDXC slot. The eMMC is formatted NTFS, but the SDXC standard specifies exFAT.

        • by Desler ( 1608317 )

          What does Windows 10 have to do with anything? 99% of people have been using NTFS for more than a decade. Why would you possible format hard drives with 100s of GB or multi-terabyte as FAT32?

          • by tepples ( 727027 )

            Why would you possible format hard drives with 100s of GB or multi-terabyte as FAT32?

            They're not hard drives, and they're not FAT32. SDXC cards are formatted as exFAT.

            • by Desler ( 1608317 )

              So then just copy the files to a hard drive.

              • by tepples ( 727027 )

                If your computer has a 32 GB internal eMMC for Windows and applications and a 64 or 128 GB SDXC card in its SD slot for user data, it's not very convenient to have to carry and plug in a USB NTFS HDD with its own separate power supply just to be able to use OneDrive.

  • Backwards? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by spaceman375 ( 780812 ) on Thursday July 06, 2017 @04:25PM (#54759667)

    Usually they declare a bug to be a feature so they don't have to fix it. This time they called a feature a bug & fixed it right away. Round and round we go!

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Official statement from MS: "You're formatting it wrong!"

    • Re:Backwards? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jetkust ( 596906 ) on Thursday July 06, 2017 @04:41PM (#54759771)
      It sounds like they are saying they forgot to properly fake the requirement that NTFS volumes must be used.
      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        Can we fake the OneDrive into thinking NTFS volumes are being used? Or do we have to face an NTFS volume to the network and copy from that?

        • Re:Backwards? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by tdelaney ( 458893 ) on Thursday July 06, 2017 @05:02PM (#54759907)

          It might be possible to have a small NTFS volume filled with junctions to directories on other volumes.

          Can't test this myself as I don't use OneDrive.

          • by Anonymous Coward
            While not OneDrive, that is exactly how I got around a similar restriction. Something was refusing to accept a mapped network drive as valid. So I created a junction on the local drive that pointed to the network drive, and the program happily used that.
      • NTFS supports data streams which OneDrive uses

        • by gl4ss ( 559668 )

          NTFS supports data streams which OneDrive uses

          seemed to have fallback to work just fine without them.

          now if they would release the patch to just remove it entirely from view when it is not connected to anything.

  • "ZeroDrive"

  • This is yet another opportunity to remind you of the benefits of "The Cloud" (storing your data on other people's servers), one of the stupidest things that people do.

    • This is yet another opportunity to remind you that redefining the meaning of "the cloud" in a tautological manner to to feed your manufactured outrage is not insightful.

  • So they nuked all other Windows formats but it works just fine on a Mac not using NTFS (MacOS Extended Journaled for example).... Seems rather arbitrary that they didn't even give a technical reason for the removal.

    • by guruevi ( 827432 )

      There is no technical reason except that OneDrive is intended for small spaces on computer's primary hard drives however they do sell OneDrive "unlimited" to their Enterprise customers and some people have been grandfathered into an unlimited plan as well.

      When you use external drives (typically formatted as FAT or exFAT for compatibility with eg. Mac) or ReFS (basically distributed file systems) you can basically get 'unlimited' "cloud storage" far beyond the few hundreds to a terabyte a primary boot disk g

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Seems like the extinguish phase just started.

  • If they never officially believed that they supported it, they probably never QAed it. So now they have a choice to greatly expand the amount of QA coverage (since they basically have to run every test case against every combination of formatted drives) or just fix it not to pretend to support the thing they didn't test.

  • by msk ( 6205 ) on Thursday July 06, 2017 @05:13PM (#54759993)

    . . . every file system under the sun is supported.

    But of course OneDrive can't use rsync, because it wasn't invented here [wikipedia.org].

    • Mod parent +1.

      This is why tech companies suck -- they keep re-inventing the wheel with their own proprietary crap.

      • by Sique ( 173459 )
        To what I have to add:

        #308280 [qdb.us] (rickest) reinventing the wheel is exactly what allows us to travel 80mph without even feeling it. the original wheel fell apart at about 5mph after 100 yards. now they're rubber, self-healing, last 4000 times longer. whoever intended the phrase "you're reinventing the wheel" to be an insult was an idiot.

        • by Anonymous Coward

          Bad argument. It assumes that the phrase "reinventing the wheel" means the exact opposite of what it actually means, points out that this would be stupid, and then stands there grinning smugly, believing that it has accomplished something.

          The reason we can travel 80mph without even feeling it is because we have taken an existing invention, studied it, and improved upon it. Literally reinventing the wheel would be to ignore all the progress made over millennia and start all over again.

          • by Sique ( 173459 )
            That's your personal interpretation of "re-inventing the wheel", but that doesn't mean it's the generally accepted one.

            Another example: When I tried to find out who invented the mixing valve, I found that there are at least 2,500 patents for a mixing valve. Each of it was either improving the State of the Art enough to get a new patent, or such a new way to create a mixing valve that no one thought of it before. And if we look deep enough into other inventions, we find the same picture again and again: We

      • by Anonymous Coward

        This is why tech companies suck -- they keep re-inventing the wheel with their own proprietary crap.

        Said someone who's never waited hours for rsync's gather/compare phase to complete on millions of files, finally deciding to sync about four changed files in a couple of seconds... so long as neither end of the rsync process ran out of memory or got kill -9'd for using too much CPU.

    • Rsync is one-to-one. OneDrive is one-to-many - as is Dropbox and have conflict resolution strategies aimed at the end user. Rsync is great, but it also doesn't do all of it.

    • I suspect it has less to do with "not invented here" than it does with "can't be leveraged for lock-in"

    • . . . every file system under the sun is supported.

      But of course OneDrive can't use rsync, because it wasn't invented here [wikipedia.org].

      What an ignorant comment. rsync and cloud storage work in fundamentally different ways. No back end or front end for cloud storage uses rsync, not even the open source ones.

      The reason being simple, rsync works by syncing two data sets. Cloud storage systems have to sync across many and the sync needs to be initiated from all sides of the pipe, and it needs to be able to sync in parallel.

      Not ever problem is a nail even if you have the biggest hammer in the world.

  • Microsoft said in a statement that it "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." According to Ars, Microsoft's position, apparently, is that OneDrive should always have warned about these usage scenarios and that it's only a bug or an oversight that allowed non-NTFS volumes to work.

    Their statement and the explanation they offer are a clear example of leveraging the power

    • Darth Nadella: "I have altered the deal. Pray I do not alter it further."

      (yeah, yeah, I realize he's a little short to pull that off...)

  • by no-body ( 127863 ) on Thursday July 06, 2017 @05:55PM (#54760189)

    15 G, then 5 G and now - hrm......

    Are there humans at work - let's assume, then what is their frame of mind?

    Imagine, sitting in an office and then comes the work order to .... and you just do what is on that work order and swallow your thoughts about it down...
    or, don't even think about it further and do the job, because you have to make a buck and live.

    That's how all those popups, nagging ads and other crap comes to life - or that's how the system works, not necessarily for the benefit and enjoyment of the guy/gal at the end of the line.

    The mental consequences of constantly blocking out are not researched.

    Keep enjoying!
     

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Onedrive is akin to a network share, so it shouldn't even care what the native filesystem is. I could backup my PCs from a network share in Time Machine, so it's an artifiacial limitation

    • I migrated to NTFS 20 years ago. Why would anyone be using FAT32 today?

      • Firmware updates. Same reason the Floppy Drive is still around.

      • Digital Camera? Some of my Nikons use FAT32. Not everybody is using NT exclusively. Some users use other filesystems.

      • OTOH, many people decided ten or even 20 years ago that market forces would eventually make Microsoft increasingly user hostile and migrated much/all of their workflow elsewhere. For them, proprietary NTFS -- even if supported in their alternative -- was and is an anathema.

    • No, it's not a network share. The files are replicated on the local disk, then the changes are synchronized.

      • It doesn't run on the local OS, (like using a Linux share on Windows, Windows doesn't care what filesystem is running on Linux). The same should be true of Onedrive.

        • It doesn't run on the local OS, (like using a Linux share on Windows, Windows doesn't care what filesystem is running on Linux). The same should be true of Onedrive.

          It does run on the local OS. That's what they're talking about, the local syncing client and the local repository of the online files. I'm sure the Office 365 and sharepoint links to the One Drive work ok no matter what file system you are using, but here they are talking about the downloaded OneDrive client and where it keeps those synced files.

        • "It doesn't run on the local OS"

          If you took the drive out and mounted it on an unnetworked computer that never had OneDrive installed, all of the files would be present in a regular directory and have all of the regular filesystem metadata.

  • by radarskiy ( 2874255 ) on Thursday July 06, 2017 @11:26PM (#54761481)

    OneDrive is working just fine on HPS+ and APFS.

  • To do whatever it takes to piss you, the end user. As usual, a big middle finger for you, Microsoft.

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