One drive online files take space on Macbook

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.

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?

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.

My place of work also has Dropbox Business Enterprise, which funnily enough in their web settings has an option to specifically address this very issue. I was enjoying the integration with Office 365/office/teams, but I am now forced to move over to dropbox. 

This also shows the laziness of the OneDrive team, typical Microsoft i suppose. Always find a way to mess things up. 

Yeah I doubt Apple will address this - their Storage Management application works just fine. I think Microsoft saw evidence that the file 'technically' wasn't taking up space so 'problem solved'. But this issue won't go away until they can account for the fact the files are telling something they are taking space.

I think Sirisy hit the nail on the head back on page 5 by linking to the Dropbox version of this issue thread . Microsoft engineers should take a look at it.

https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-files-folders/Smart-Sync-still-taking-up-local-space/td-p/284499