OneDrive on mac is keeping two copies of all downloaded files

Anonymous
2022-07-14T09:40:57+00:00

Environment:

MacOS: 12.4 (21F79)

Mac filesystem type hosting OneDrive folder: APFS Data Volume: /dev/disk1s1 on /System/Volumes/Data (apfs, local, journaled, nobrowse)
OneDrive: 22.131.0619.0001 (Standalone)
OneDrive home account as part of Microsoft 365 Personal subscription
OneDrive folder: ~/OneDrive, symlink to /Users/mikaelkjaerulff/Library/CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal
OneDrive “Files On-Demand” is off by selecting “Download all OneDrive files now”
OneDrive “File collaboration” is off
OneDrive status is “Your files are synced” and there are no warnings/errors
OneDrive storage: 134 GB used of 1.01 TB (as reported by https://onedrive.live.com/?v=managestorage)

I have discovered that OneDrive keeps 2 local copies of all the synced files.  So instead of taking up 134 GB of disk space it uses 268 GB – that can’t be right!  The (I assume) primary copy is in the OneDrive folder:

~/Library/CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal/

And then there is the (I assume) secondary (or internal?) copy in:

~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.OneDriveStandaloneSuite/OneDrive.noindex/OneDrive/

This is true copies of the files, not hard-linked files – I checked that it is different inodes:

> cd ~/Library

> ls -i CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal/Gravhund/ActivitiesData.xlsx Group\ Containers/UBF8T346G9.OneDriveStandaloneSuite/OneDrive.noindex/OneDrive/Gravhund/ActivitiesData.xlsx
8965664803 CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal/Gravhund/ActivitiesData.xlsx
8965664807 Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.OneDriveStandaloneSuite/OneDrive.noindex/OneDrive/Gravhund/ActivitiesData.xlsx

There are some differences. If I run a diff on the two locations, like:

> cd ~/Library

> diff -rq CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal/ Group\ Containers/UBF8T346G9.OneDriveStandaloneSuite/OneDrive.noindex/OneDrive | grep -v .DS_Store > ~/tmp/diff.txt

Note that I exclude Mac Spotlight files (.DS_Store) – Spotlight does not run on the secondary copy. I get:

> cat -v ~/tmp/diff.txt

Only in CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal/: .Trash

Only in Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.OneDriveStandaloneSuite/OneDrive.noindex/OneDrive/Ejerforeningen matr. nr. 146 Hareskov By, Værløse/Billag/2021: 2021-01-14 ?M-^Ersoversigt.PDF
Only in CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal/Ejerforeningen matr. nr. 146 Hareskov By, Værløse/Billag/2021: 2021-01-14 A?M-^Jrsoversigt.PDF
Only in Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.OneDriveStandaloneSuite/OneDrive.noindex/OneDrive/Ejerforeningen matr. nr. 146 Hareskov By, Værløse/Billag/2021: 2021-02-17 SEAS-NVE - årsopgørelse.pdf
Only in CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal/Ejerforeningen matr. nr. 146 Hareskov By, Værløse/Billag/2021: 2021-02-17 SEAS-NVE - a?M-^Jrsopgørelse.pdf
Only in Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.OneDriveStandaloneSuite/OneDrive.noindex/OneDrive/Ejerforeningen matr. nr. 146 Hareskov By, Værløse/Billag/2021: 2021-03-22 Novafos - årsregning 2020.pdf
Only in CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal/Ejerforeningen matr. nr. 146 Hareskov By, Værløse/Billag/2021: 2021-03-22 Novafos - a?M-^Jrsregning 2020.pdf
Only in Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.OneDriveStandaloneSuite/OneDrive.noindex/OneDrive/Ejerforeningen matr. nr. 146 Hareskov By, Værløse/Billag/2021: 2021-12-31 ?M-^Ersoversigt.PDF
Only in CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal/Ejerforeningen matr. nr. 146 Hareskov By, Værløse/Billag/2021: 2021-12-31 A?M-^Jrsoversigt.PDF
Files CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal/Gravhund/GravDB/ETL/IMPO/sed0.txt and Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.OneDriveStandaloneSuite/OneDrive.noindex/OneDrive/Gravhund/GravDB/ETL/IMPO/sed0.txt differ
Files CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal/Gravhund/GravDB/ETL/IMPO/sed2.txt and Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.OneDriveStandaloneSuite/OneDrive.noindex/OneDrive/Gravhund/GravDB/ETL/IMPO/sed2.txt differ
Files CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal/Gravhund/GravDB/ETL/KULD/sed0.txt and Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.OneDriveStandaloneSuite/OneDrive.noindex/OneDrive/Gravhund/GravDB/ETL/KULD/sed0.txt differ
Files CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal/Gravhund/GravDB/ETL/KULD/sed2.txt and Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.OneDriveStandaloneSuite/OneDrive.noindex/OneDrive/Gravhund/GravDB/ETL/KULD/sed2.txt differ
Files CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal/Gravhund/GravDB/ETL/PROV/sed2.txt and Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.OneDriveStandaloneSuite/OneDrive.noindex/OneDrive/Gravhund/GravDB/ETL/PROV/sed2.txt differ
Files CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal/Gravhund/GravDB/ETL/PROV.KRITIK/sed0.txt and Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.OneDriveStandaloneSuite/OneDrive.noindex/OneDrive/Gravhund/GravDB/ETL/PROV.KRITIK/sed0.txt differ
Files CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal/Gravhund/GravDB/ETL/PROV.PRID/sed2.txt and Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.OneDriveStandaloneSuite/OneDrive.noindex/OneDrive/Gravhund/GravDB/ETL/PROV.PRID/sed2.txt differ
Files CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal/Gravhund/GravDB/ETL/RYGI/sed0.txt and Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.OneDriveStandaloneSuite/OneDrive.noindex/OneDrive/Gravhund/GravDB/ETL/RYGI/sed0.txt differ
Files CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal/Gravhund/GravDB/ETL/RYGI/sed2.txt and Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.OneDriveStandaloneSuite/OneDrive.noindex/OneDrive/Gravhund/GravDB/ETL/RYGI/sed2.txt differ
Files CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal/Gravhund/GravDB/ETL/RYGS/sed2.txt and Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.OneDriveStandaloneSuite/OneDrive.noindex/OneDrive/Gravhund/GravDB/ETL/RYGS/sed2.txt differ
Files CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal/Gravhund/GravDB/ETL/UDST/sed1.txt and Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.OneDriveStandaloneSuite/OneDrive.noindex/OneDrive/Gravhund/GravDB/ETL/UDST/sed1.txt differ
Files CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal/Gravhund/GravDB/ETL/UDST/sed2.txt and Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.OneDriveStandaloneSuite/OneDrive.noindex/OneDrive/Gravhund/GravDB/ETL/UDST/sed2.txt differ
Only in CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal/Gravhund/WWW/nsdgk: index.htm~
Only in CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal/Gravhund/WWW/nsdgk: tilmeld.htm~
Only in CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal/Gravhund/WWW/nsdgk: tilmeld_ver.htm~
Only in CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal/Gravhund/WWW/nsdgk/traen: lydighed.htm~
Only in CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal/Gravhund/WWW/nsdgk/traen: ring.htm~
Only in CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal/Gravhund/WWW/nsdgk/traen: spor.htm~

I see the following main differences:

  1. Symlinks in primary are converted into normal files with content of the symlink in the secondary.
  2. Some file names are converted (like ?M-^Ersoversigt.PDF to årsregning 2020.pdf).
  3. Looks like some emacs backup-files are not copied to the secondary location and not uploaded to the cloud.

(1)

 Symlinks are converted to normal files:

> ls -l "CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal/Gravhund/GravDB/ETL/IMPO/sed0.txt" "Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.OneDriveStandaloneSuite/OneDrive.noindex/OneDrive/Gravhund/GravDB/ETL/IMPO/sed0.txt"
lrwxrwxr-x  1 mikaelkjaerulff  staff  18 Jun 17 20:01 CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal/Gravhund/GravDB/ETL/IMPO/sed0.txt -> ../common/sed0.txt
-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 mikaelkjaerulff  staff  18 Jun 17 20:01 Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.OneDriveStandaloneSuite/OneDrive.noindex/OneDrive/Gravhund/GravDB/ETL/IMPO/sed0.txt
> cat -v "Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.OneDriveStandaloneSuite/OneDrive.noindex/OneDrive/Gravhund/GravDB/ETL/IMPO/sed0.txt"
../common/sed0.txt

I do understand that it often makes little to no sense synchronizing symbolic links to a remote location as-is – they will often point to an invalid location.  But if the symlink is relative (like above), then it might work (if the remote filesystem supports the concept of symbolic links).  The real annoyance is that if you do a fresh download from the OneDrive cloud the symlinks are “lost” – which is the case when you do a reset of OneDrive.  The symlinks are restored as normal files with the content of the symlink.  As far as I can tell there is no easy way to find just these files and convert them back to symlinks.

(2)

Apple’s APFS file system encodes file and directory names using Unicode but is not a “normalizing file system”. I assume the secondary OneDrive copy does some normalization (from NFC to NFD) of file and directory names before uploading to the cloud.  At least that is the only explanation I can come up with.

Ref on APFS and normal forms:

(3)

I don’t understand why emacs backup files are not copied to the secondary and subsequently uploaded to the cloud.  I have a suspicion it could be due to the way emacs create the backup file.  Nevertheless, OneDrive does not pick up the emacs backup files – this must be a bug in OneDrive.

I could understand if OneDrive has the need for a temporary location (to normalize for example) for files and directories before being uploaded to the cloud – but with emphasis on “temporary”.  The secondary copies live forever – that can’t be right.

As a side note: Still OneDrive goes to 100+ % CPU for a minute or so every time I save a file in my OneDrive location.  At least the newest version of OneDrive does not cause kernel panics anymore (fingers crossed, knock on wood…).

What – if anything – can I do to avoid having the secondary copies?

/Mikael

Microsoft 365 and Office | OneDrive | For home | MacOS

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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  1. Anonymous
    2022-09-29T19:04:40+00:00

    There are only two locations!

    I called them "sync" location and "cache" location.

    1)

    The "sync" location is where the data really is stored and this is the folder that you selected when installing and configuring OneDrive.

    The path you chose will not be a folder, but a symbolic link to the "cache" location!

    But in the parent folder that contains this symbolic link, where will be a hidden folder named ".ODContainer-OneDrive" and this is the real physical storage of your total data.

    At me, this looks like this:

    (base) tja@mini:~$ ls /Volumes/XTRMQ/OneDrive_TB1/

    total 16

    -rw-r--r--@ 1 tja staff 6148 Sep 18 23:34 .DS_Store

    drwxrwxrwx 4 tja staff 128 Sep 18 23:35 .ODContainer-OneDrive/

    lrwxr-xr-x 1 tja staff 49 Sep 18 23:35 OneDrive@ -> /Users/tja/Library/CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal

    2)

    The "cache" location always resides in your home: ../Library/CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal (your's is missing the "-Personal"? I use the App Store App with a OneDrive 365 family subscription)

    3)

    What you found below ../Library/Group\ Containers/... is just a symbolic link to the "sync" location.

    At me, this looks like this:

    (base) tja@mini:~$ ls -al /Users/tja/Library/Group\ Containers/UBF8T346G9.OneDriveSyncClientSuite/OneDrive.noindex/OneDrive

    lrwxr-xr-x@ 1 tja staff 58 Sep 18 23:35 /Users/tja/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.OneDriveSyncClientSuite/OneDrive.noindex/OneDrive@ -> /Volumes/XTRMQ/OneDrive_TB1/.ODContainer-OneDrive/OneDrive

    But of course this could be different when your sync location is on the internal system disk.

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-09-29T15:06:59+00:00

    Robert_TwoDrive: That is pretty much my use case. No external drive, 65G in the OneDrive folder. Two copies, no symlinks, on my computer's drive. (And I selected "Download all files now" with the intent of keeping a copy of all files on my drive. ... I want A copy, not TWO copies).

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-09-29T14:58:32+00:00

    Curious and sorry if I missed this. Does everyone on this thread fully synch their OneDrives to their Mac? (no files on demand usage)?

    The underlying mechanics are not fully understood by me but I do know the following:

    1. My OneDrive is approximately 325GB
    2. When I unlink my account, delete the OneDrive app *and* ensure the two locations already referenced referenced above, I free up approximately 650GB of space on the drive. (i do not use an external drive)

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-09-28T21:41:16+00:00

    I just went through the exercise of removing OneDrive, deleting the Container copy, re-installing OneDrive and letting everything sync. I selected the option to keep all files on my drive. Once again, I am seeing two copies of everything: my "working drive" and the one Microsoft so thoughtfully crated for me that consumes storage real-estate:

    My files:
    /Users/mymac/Library/CloudStorage/OneDrive

    Microsoft-created copy:

    /Users/mymac/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.OneDriveStandaloneSuite/OneDrive.noindex/OneDrive

    I don't see any symlinks anywhere, actual duplicate files exist.

    (Note for formatting on this Forum, jump to or insert a new line with "SHIFT-Return")

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-09-28T19:29:40+00:00

    And the very last thing:

    ~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.OneDriveStandaloneSuite/OneDrive.noindex/OneDrive/

    This path of yours, it is just a SymLink to the OneDrive "sync" location:

    (base) tja@mini:~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.OneDriveSyncClientSuite/OneDrive.noindex$ ls OneDrive

    lrwxr-xr-x@ 1 tja staff 58 Sep 18 23:35 OneDrive@ -> /Volumes/XTRMQ/OneDrive_TB1/.ODContainer-OneDrive/OneDrive

    P.S. I realy hate the forum software - writing and formatting stuff is nearly impossible.

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