OneDrive changing the dates on my photos?!?!?

Anonymous
2018-05-14T02:11:34+00:00

Hello,

I recently uploaded 45,000 of our family photos to OneDrive, the dates ranging from 1999 to 2018.  They had been previously separated in folders by year and month, so decided it was time to back them up in the cloud and take advantage of Microsoft's photo features through OneDrive.  After uploading all of my photos, I was shocked to see that many of my photos were reorganized.  Randomly, photos from 2002, 2005, 2009, 2014, and 2016 were shown as brand new photos with a current date stamp.  I found that there were literally hundreds of photos that were RE-DATED to the the date that I uploaded the photos.  Somehow, OneDrive physically changed the metadata on the Date Modified and Date Taken to reflect the date that I uploaded the photos, not the date that they were originally taken.  Even worse, the uploaded picture permanently changed the date on my local pictures, so now these photos are irreversibly corrupted and I cannot organize them by date anymore.

Microsoft, this is a massively humongous bug in the OneDrive system that I found, by searching, has been questioned several times before.  Whenever I look at those posts, the commenting has been locked so that nobody can comment anymore.  Not sure why Microsoft wants this issue hushed by the community, but this problem will not just go away.  It needs to be fixed as soon as possible!!  We have thousands of photos that are unknowingly being corrupted, most people probably just haven't figured it out yet.

One potential solution to this problem would be to turn off whatever mechanism is redating photos/videos, or changing metadata.  If anyone else is having this issue, please comment below.  Microsoft, is there anything being done to fix this bug???

Thank you, and I respectfully appreciate your attention to this matter.  OneDrive is a great service and I really hope to continue using it.  This is just too big not to make top priority in resolving.

Windows for home | Other | Music, photos, and video

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-05-16T14:05:56+00:00

    J Oliver,

    I do have Files On Demand enabled.  Do you think that might be the problem?

    Thanks for digging into this!

    Chad

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-05-16T14:16:30+00:00

    I did a test on my machine and noticed that the metadata was missing, so OneDrive may turned out to be the culprit!

    I really do not use this feature given that my PC has adequate storage for my large photo collection, but what it does it uploads the original files to OneDrive, and leaves a placeholder on your PC. Pretty nifty feature for Windows machines with limited storage.

    Apps such as Windows Photo Gallery and Photos sort photos based on the dates they can find from the image files. If you look at the table on this post, you will note the "reading" order WPG uses for dates. If there is no date value within the metadata, WPG turns to the date time created value, thus explaining any irregular sorting issues.

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-05-16T14:38:10+00:00

    J Oliver,

    Very interesting!  So deleting/restarting picture metadata must be an unintended consequence of using Files On Demand!  This tells me that everyone should turn that feature off, or Microsoft should disable the feature, until this issue can be fixed.  I’m telling you, as you would agree, there will be alot of ticked people when they realize their priceless photos from 2005 have been redated to 2018!

    Do you have plans to report this issue up to engineering or whoever can take next steps in the OneDrive department??

    Thanks again for figuring this out!!!

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-05-16T15:57:14+00:00

    I believe the Files On-Demand feature is meant to work that way. The Files-On Demand feature was introduced some time ago and removed for some reason, it was re-introduced a couple of months ago.

    The file is kept in OneDrive Cloud, leaving a "placeholder" file on your PC, so what you see is not the file per se. The goal is that the file does not take up space on the disk.

    If you have a lot of disk capacity for photos, I do not see a reason to use Files On-Demand, as it may slow file access times a bit, as the file is retrieved from OneDrive Servers.

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  5. Anonymous
    2018-05-16T16:33:22+00:00

    J Oliver,

    I agree that Files On Demand is a useful feature with low disk space.  But i think most people, who check the settings, would select Files On Demand whether low disc space or not just because it seems like a neat feature.  What we are not told, and im sure 99% of people do not know, is that Files On Demand will corrupt picture files or any files with MetaData permantly erasing the creation dates.  If people knew this, 99% of people would not use it.

    So while Files On Demand may be meant to work that way, your users would not want it to work that way and it is not being disclosed that the feature erases metadata.  Can you let me know what will be done to fix this process and/or if you are sending this thread up to the right people to review the issue and make changes?

    i just seriously feel bad for all the thousands of people out there who are currently having their files unknowingly compromised.

    Thanks again!

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