One drive online files take space on Macbook

I had suspected they might go this way. Passing the buck is so much easier. 

They should really take down the "Free up space" feature. In practical terms "Free up space" does absolutely nothing of the sort. 

I work with massive video files and was using Free up space as a quasi archive. I had hoped that right click free up space would.. free up that space on my SSD, whilst leaving the file structure to easily return to old projects on demand as needed.

With your help, I was able to get a good result from the Terminal and send a screenshot to OneDrive support. And indeed, the result in Terminal was “st_blocks=0” for my files on demand. Altough the files do take up space according to the storage utillity of my Mac, which I also send proof of to support.

Today, I received a response back from OneDrive customer support (originally in Dutch, which I have translated):

“Our Product Specialists have now responded and indicated that since the tested 'online only' files all yielded the combination st_blocks = 0 as a result, this confirms that these files do not take up physical storage of the hard disk. This means that the problem cannot be solved by the OneDrive Engineers, but it is best done with Mac support. My advice is therefore to raise the issue with them so that they can investigate why the system continues to indicate a local storage usage.”

I find this response a bit frustating. Why do I, as a customer, have to take this up with Apple? A more customer-focused approach would have been if they consulted Apple engineers on my/our behalf.

Sigh.

Anyway, does anyone have an ‘in’ with Apple support?

Playing with another file after reading this stack exchange post:

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/436314/how-to-get-the-physical-size-of-a-file-in-linux

"ls -l will give you the apparent size of the file, which is the number of bytes a program would read if it read the file from start to finish. du would give you the size of the file "on disk"."

I tried these commands:

$ ls -l /Users/me/OneDrive\ -\ Me/test_file.pdf -rwxrwxrwx@ 1 me staff 511K Jul 23 15:37 /Users/me/OneDrive\ -\ Me/test_file.pdf $ du -h /Users/me/OneDrive\ -\ Me/test_file.pdf 0B /Users/me/OneDrive\ -\ Me/test_file.pdf

​

The "apparent size" of my test file was 511k, while the "size of the file on disk" is 0B. My hunch is MacOS is using the "apparent size" and not the "size of the file on disk" when computing available space in Storage Management.

It’s good to hear that you are talking to them and they are looking at it technically.

Your Terminal is situated at your Home folder. You should cd (Change Directory) to the folder with the file first. Or, quicker, drag the file from Finder to your terminal window instead.

You want something more like:

$ stat -s /path/to/4\ Sessie\ 16\ juni/Ch1_Full_2020-06-16T12_06.mp4

​

Here’s what I get…

$ stat -s /Users/me/OneDrive\ -\ Me/master_file.py st_dev=16777223 st_ino=13004531695 st_mode=0100777 st_nlink=1 st_uid=501 st_gid=20 st_rdev=0 st_size=5002 st_atime=1597325836 st_mtime=1584123449 st_ctime=1596488847 st_birthtime=1584123448 st_blksize=4096 st_blocks=0 st_flags=16

​

After I run the command, the file goes from a cloud to a green check as though it triggered the download.

I know this has been going on for some while.

Has Microsoft even acknowledged this issue at all anywhere or advised they are working on a fix? It seems there is zero feedback or communication going on.

This is serious flaw with the application and for some people it has caused a lot of issues. 

This is a paid service and if we are unable to use the service we pay for on our devices without it effectively rendering them un useable (for some people) its not really on.

Does any one have any updates on this that maybe I'm not aware of?

Can this be esclated in any way? 

I have personally been in mail-contact with Microsoft for the last couple of weeks. After the initial support-employee could not help me, the issue was send to the "product team", which was a couple of weeks ago. I have documented this here on this thread (see page 6). Yesterday I got the first instruction from the product team, which I have listed below.

I believe I first got in contact with them trough Contact Office Support. After typing the problem and logging in, I could start a chat with them after which the contact moved to e-mail. Perhaps more people can try to get in contact with Microsoft that way?

Anyway, yesterday they send me an e-mail with an instruction from the product team asking me to:

• Open a Terminal window.

• Type stat -s filename (where 'filename' has to be replaced with the full name of one of my online only files)

• Send them a screenshot of the results

They told me the result should normally be "st_blocks=0", meaning the files takes up no physical space on my harddrive. Unfortunately, the result in my case is “No such file or directory” - and I've send them a screenshot of that.

I am now waiting for a response. But I am curious to see what happens when someone else follows these instructions. My screenshot is below, where you can see: a finder window with the file, below that the terminal and on the right the mail from Microsoft.