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OneDrive duplicating the user folder is a deeply confusing decision. I spent years not knowing why half my documents were missing.
if it worked properly, the idea is that you could do a complete reinstall of windows on the same or another device, and not lose most of your saved work (as a lot of things save in the user folder and its sub directories)
the problem is its implemented like shit.
It would also need to save AppData/Roaming (and AppData/Local too maybe for good measure since lots of programmers are idiots and save stuff to the wrong folder).
I feel like the only person ever that this has actually worked out for, but I only even was in a position to need it because of another boneheaded Microsoft decision. My computer updated itself overnight and did a fresh install of windows 11 without my permission and in doing so, wiped my C drive totally clean. I would have lost all of my user data, but OneDrive had backed up my user folder correctly (somehow) and when I logged into my Microsoft account, it downloaded everything and it gave me back everything including game saves. All I lost was my downloads folder and the recycle bin, all of which was just trash anyway.
I guess I can’t complain too much, but if literally anything had gone wrong, I would have basically just lost all of the data I’d accumulated over the course of about 20 years.
It’s one of those things that people probably wouldn’t complain about or even notice if it actually worked properly, but as it stands it’s just pure enshittification.
I literally just made a new documents folder called something else to avoid confusion. In addition to excising OneDrive from every new Windows install.
Another problem with that is that audio software like sample-based virtual instruments store all the data in the documents folder, which quickly takes up any cloud space I had. That clearly belongs in some sort of app data folder, but that hasn’t been the guidance from Microsoft to developers.
Everything uses the documents folder because everything on windows is a backwards-compatible pile of spaghetti.
Games even use the “Documents” folder instead of the “My Games” folder, or
.../%appdata/local. There is soft-guidance from Microsoft, but it’s not really enforced, and idk what the APIs are like for saving stuff.
Death to Microsoft
They should get anti-trust lawsuit against them for that.
Not fair to integrate cloud storage in your OS and not have it be open. Even less fair to push it on people like that.
