OneDrive deleted local files and started syncing old files !

The same thing has just happened to me. This is awful. Spent a whole day customising my pc and moving files across and now it's all gone. It's changed my settings to over a year a go. Lost it all. Microsoft need to fix this. It's a major problem.

Still happening. Had just edited my little modding project, delete previous backups, made a new backup. One Drive asked me if I wanted to remove my file. I checked my work folder. Everything was listed as synced. So, I think... Yeah? I just removed a huge chunk of backup files so I guess it was asking me to confirm that.

Nope, the damn thing thought I want to remove my latest work and restore a version from 2 days ago. All of them. The damn thing doesn't even have the decency to backup my latest work in the file history. Those were synced, damnit.

After having lost all my files and being told it was my fault I have been watching this thread since in hopes that may be there would be an answer or a solution. I agree at this point in time that MS wont do anything about this. Their ethics as a company have eroded into nothing.

My answer to MS over this issue was to fire them. I cancelled my subscription.

Yes indeed. The unforgivable aspect of the user experience here is the combination of

A) promoting it very heavily (to the point of implying it is a necessity) during system installation

B) Failing to convey the implications that you once and for all WILL have to trust microsoft to keep your files for you. Fineprint in legalities inside a EULA if by far not enuogh this should be front-and-center when installing a windows machine, and  there should be a better way to create a classic windows account than unplugging the network cable at install time!!

C) It is irreversible for a normal user, because you immediatley lose the ability to tell where your data is, permanently, and hours of searching for help turns out no official process for actually getting it turned off once and for all.

D) deleting the online copies that mistakenly got leaked into microsofts servers and should not be there immediately deletes the same ORIGINAL files in your local drive, which is highly likely to lead to permanent data loss for average people. I lost 100 gigs of my original photos to this mistake - "1: Oh its uploading everything, not just the docuents folder -  that shouldnt happen!  2: turn off syncing, 3: delete all that got uploaded. 4. turn on syncing again., 5; two days later -"where the hell did my photos go?"   6: restore the backup from external drive.  7: omg it's uploading again...  (rinse and repeat)" If i hadnt had an external backup of my own, enabling onedrive backup would have lead to losing 15 years of family photos permanently in my case. not acceptable.

Something similar happened to me.  Thankfully I didn't have much important work on this PC.  It's a relatively new computer, but I noticed that my wallpapers were missing and screensaver had vanished.  Closer inspection found that all of my local files had been deleted and moved to the cloud.  Everything in OneDrive was set to keep all files local, but even after syncing the folders I still could not access them locally.  I could only see my files when online.

This is a huge privacy and security violation.  I expect my local drive to contain the files I put there.  Instead OneDrive hijacked my PC, deleted and moved files, and didn't tell me anything about what it had done.  

I've been using iCloud with OS X and Google Drive for years.  They work great as online storage and backup of local files.  I particularly appreciate how iCloud becomes a separate location in the file system within OS X allowing easy access to files online while also doing backups of important folders on the local drive... like how a backup system should work.

OneDrive is a nightmare.  Backup software that destroys files, changes your local drive, forces files online, and leaves you in the dark about what it's doing.  You couldn't make a worse cloud storage system if you tried.  I'm thankful I found out how dangerous it is to my local file system before I put too many work files on this computer.

OneDrive is now fully disabled on this computer.  There's no way I'm giving it access to my system again.  You really messed this up Microsoft.

RichardJones2112: Good luck with that, I hope you get it sorted. I'm lucky that I never trusted it totally. In fact, I switched from a local cloud backup service because it crashed. I haven't had any issues since I reset and reinstalled it, but I'll never use OneDrive as my primary data store.

I hear rumours that Microsoft are going to try to force users onto the cloud for both apps and data. We would be reverting to the 1970s and dumb terminals. (I'm old enough to remember when we stopped using punched cards and paper tape for data entry.)

This move would make OneDrive irrelevant. Maybe that's why there doesn't seem to be anybody from the OneDrive team listening any more. (They're still taking my payments, though )

I must say that Microsoft developers would need to be completely divorced from their users, if they thought that the rest of humanity had access to the same SuperGigabyteDataBlaster broadband they have. In this real world, I think I'd be forced to swallow my pride after all these decades and switch to Apple.

Imagine! No more BSODs!