Instead of Windows Backup (which relies on M$ OneDrive), you can enable (in Control panel settings) and use Windows File History.
File History is a backup feature in Windows that automatically saves copies of your files from specific folders, like Documents and Pictures, to an external drive or network location. It allows you to restore previous versions of your files if they are lost or damaged.
To enable File History in Windows, connect an external drive or network location, then go to Settings > Update & Security > Backup, and select "Add a drive" to choose your backup location. Finally, turn on File History to start backing up your files automatically.
This stuff is increasingly normalized across platforms.
I'd say "vote with your wallet", but when all the tech platforms are doing it, there's not much choice. PCs / laptops are probably the last hold out: Just switch to Linux (but be careful which distro you pick) or MacOS (for now).
The political pendulum is going to swing far left in the US given the disasters that are playing out in DC. Hopefully this sort of crap will be banned when that happens.
Don't want OneDrive. Don't want co-pilot. And I say that as someone who enjoys vibe coding because while the former two are push, the latter is pull. Pull is the remedy to enshittification. But good luck explaining that to someone whose job depends on that not being the case.
Can we crowdfund someone going to the Microsoft campuses, heckling every employee nonstop on the grounds, and when security comes up, just tell them "maybe later"?
In Ubuntu I turn off motd ads, in Windows I turn off this stuff, it doesn't come back, I only remember it exists when I see the outrage journalism headlines. I don't see why more people don't just take the steps to remove annoyances.
[0] for the most part because nothing - not even macOS where Apple controls the entire stack from CPU up to the OS - is without problems. Though i'm doing weird stuff with my PC - on my laptop i just threw it in ~3 years ago and it has been working without issues since then
I used to use Windows Backup with One Drive years ago but it just really pissed me off, especially with how My Documents is handled.
There was that time I discovered several GB of screenshots had been automatically saved to My Pictures from some setting they snuck into the printscreen screen grab tool and then that of course those were automatically uploaded to the cloud. After disabling the option it would sometimes reenable itself.
And game devs throwing random shit into My Documents was also fun. Ubisoft were terrible for this, after playing a game I'd notice a bunch of cache files they dumped into My Docs being uploaded. I mean putting save games and config files inside my docs is annoying enough, random cache files is just taking the piss.
Also windows backup would mess up my desktop between systems on occasion which was also very fun!
I disabled most of the shit but it was still annoying on occasion. Then a year or two ago I solved the problem by just using Linux for 90% of things, Mint at first but now Fedora, and grudgingly booting back into Windows for the other 10% of my needs.
I just bought my first windows 11 computer. Why are my personal folders like pictures and documents under a OneDrive folder? This is insane. Going to see how Ubuntu runs on it and hopefully never look back.
I stopped using these long ago because every other app you install puts something there so it becomes a landfill automatically.
Just create an additional partition and put all your non-OS files there. This is a classic idea people have been using since the DOS days, still working great.
Then Microsoft can do the exact opposite sometimes. The drive cleanup option used alright, but then I noticed that it now wants to clear the Downloads library. I don't know about everyone else, but I put more than temporary files there.
This is the reason I don't want to use a Microsoft account within my operating system. Microsoft never asks and I cannot have my data synced to a (very slow) cloud randomly.
No time to check every Windows update if I got surprise features like that. In my opinion Microsoft has lost it completely when it comes to user demand and their main OS.
But if you don't have an account, MS cannot just sync the data anywhere... at least yet...
Since no one mentioned how to actually dismiss the notification forever:
OneDrive is treated as a normal app that is installed by default, you can actually just uninstall it through Add or Remove Programs in the Control Panel.
OP doesn’t say why they are against free cloud backup, and it doesn’t matter, but (like everything else in Windows) there’s a registry setting you could change to disable the notification. I think it is
Hope the PM in charge with the scammy copy designed to trick people into turning this on is happy with the boost in free users falling for it.
My dad turned it on not knowing what it meant and it completely messed up his workflows and now I have to figure out how to safely disable it and move his files back.
I will remember Microsoft causing this problem for him every time I think of or get asked if someone should use a Microsoft product or service.
One is the many many years old renaming trouble, renaming a file in Windows Explorer inside the OneDrive sometimes select all while I am alread typing extension to the end of the file name, clearing everything with the following keystroke, either resulting in something stupid saved on Enter if I do not realise what is happening (and being mad not remembering what the original name was), or just have to cancel and restart the renaming. Very frequent and annoying.
But a ... lets call it funny, so a funny trouble I recently discovered is that file name completely fine with Wndows is incompatible with OneDrive, OneDriva mandates me to "change the filename! change it!" (with different words but the same tone). What the f! Microsoft is not compatible with itself? : D What a clusterfuck. It is fairly new, I believe there are spaces in fron of the file name that is generated with some software I am trying, I don't care that much, nonessential, but very comedic. I have too much difficulty with using Windows to care with all the trouble and spend any time on those, I work around those, I increasingly give no f. (my work mandates Windows, ah!)
I also seen some sort of message box when a certain software tried to automatically open a newly created file in OneDrive, something like this: "The file http://sharepoint.blablabl/bla/bla/newly_created_file.ext" cannot be found. Whaaaat?! I work with a desktiop only software, it does not even care about internet connection. Saving the file to an ordinary folder works great, opens automatically. Sounds like at some point querying the full path of the file produces an internet address? Again, I give no sht to this crp that much to go ino and investigate and diagnose this hundredths of bug, just to have fruitless conversation a very understanding and very useless support guy or a forum audience suggesting how should I wrap my life around the stupidity of Windows.
A family friend upgraded to Windows 11 and had it helpfully turned on personal files being OneDrive enabled. It ate up her free space and suddenly she couldn't receive or reply to email anymore. She was nearly 80 and had no idea why until she had randomly asked me to help her with something on her computer.
Yeah, the tech sector's understanding of the notion of consent is so unique and twisted.
It makes sense now that the industry has the reputation that it has w.r.t misconduct/harrassment and how it's generally seen as being filled with creeps. Just keep asking until the user slips up or gets tired of the endless prompts/manual work required.
Besides serving as a dark pattern, it also relieves devs from having ti store and check a user preference. You know, mutable state is bad, including user preferences. ;)
Last time I tried to restore a file from a customer's onedrive it just failed with a variety of 500 errors or just blank pages. The reason I was trying to restore it was because windows had moved all of their files into onedrive without their informed consent and (at least) this one was no longer accessible.
onedrive is not a backup: like all automatic sync systems it is a liability. It may be useful but it is still a liability.
OneDrive has a pretty annoying interaction with Microsoft Office-PDF exports (not print to PDF).
If you export a PDF to a OneDrive folder, Office (especially Word) will instead create this file onto OneDrive itself (not local).
Its a 50/50 chance that your local OneDrive will sync it properly especially if you're in a fast workflow (e.g., preparing for a meeting soon with minor amendments) or you wait for several minutes for it to sync or you logon to OneDrive web to get manually download the file.
You pretty much have to export to a non-OneDrive synced folder for PDF export to work on local reliably.
I turn off every 'to cloud' option I can find on any device I have. Apple's iCloud is just as evil. I have turned that off so many times over the years it makes me angry. It is clear that these companies push 'cloud' in general as a dark pattern to lock you in and harvest your data and actions. Even if they don't train directly, the metadata of usage is all there and I find it hard to believe they don't harvest every bit they can. We need laws and protections that require cloud independence similar to the browser wars. If you have a 'cloud' offering baked into your OS then it must be a competitive market offering. You should also be able to easily migrate to different cloud offerings.
At this point, Windows has jumped the shark. It's clear Microsoft now see the future of their company as cloud services, with the desktop gateways just as an endpoint for that, and the progressive enshittification of the Microsoft ecosystem has reached the point at which it is no longer the sensible OS for the mainstream, but is now a gamified mess like pay-to-play gaming.
Fortunately for most of us, Linux and MacOS exist. But companies that have built their entire IT infrastructure on Windows really have no clear way out other than to follow Microsoft down the rabbit hole - which is, of course, the whole point of these recent changes.
85 comments
[ 0.18 ms ] story [ 70.0 ms ] threadFile History is a backup feature in Windows that automatically saves copies of your files from specific folders, like Documents and Pictures, to an external drive or network location. It allows you to restore previous versions of your files if they are lost or damaged.
To enable File History in Windows, connect an external drive or network location, then go to Settings > Update & Security > Backup, and select "Add a drive" to choose your backup location. Finally, turn on File History to start backing up your files automatically.
https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10
I'd say "vote with your wallet", but when all the tech platforms are doing it, there's not much choice. PCs / laptops are probably the last hold out: Just switch to Linux (but be careful which distro you pick) or MacOS (for now).
The political pendulum is going to swing far left in the US given the disasters that are playing out in DC. Hopefully this sort of crap will be banned when that happens.
- "Yes" -> Consent.
- "No" -> Popup asks you again some time later.
- "Don't ask again" -> Meaning "Yes, and don't ask again".
-> https://endof10.org/ (it has a map with people who can help install Linux)
-> https://www.opensuse.org/ (what i'm using on my PCs, works fine for the most part[0])
-> https://www.linuxmint.com/ (people seem to like this)
-> https://bazzite.gg/ (seems to be popular with gamers)
-> https://www.debian.org/ (almost everything is based on this :-P)
[0] for the most part because nothing - not even macOS where Apple controls the entire stack from CPU up to the OS - is without problems. Though i'm doing weird stuff with my PC - on my laptop i just threw it in ~3 years ago and it has been working without issues since then
They all provide backup via their own paid clouds and ask for an opt-in.
There was that time I discovered several GB of screenshots had been automatically saved to My Pictures from some setting they snuck into the printscreen screen grab tool and then that of course those were automatically uploaded to the cloud. After disabling the option it would sometimes reenable itself.
And game devs throwing random shit into My Documents was also fun. Ubisoft were terrible for this, after playing a game I'd notice a bunch of cache files they dumped into My Docs being uploaded. I mean putting save games and config files inside my docs is annoying enough, random cache files is just taking the piss.
Also windows backup would mess up my desktop between systems on occasion which was also very fun!
I disabled most of the shit but it was still annoying on occasion. Then a year or two ago I solved the problem by just using Linux for 90% of things, Mint at first but now Fedora, and grudgingly booting back into Windows for the other 10% of my needs.
I stopped using these long ago because every other app you install puts something there so it becomes a landfill automatically.
Just create an additional partition and put all your non-OS files there. This is a classic idea people have been using since the DOS days, still working great.
No time to check every Windows update if I got surprise features like that. In my opinion Microsoft has lost it completely when it comes to user demand and their main OS.
But if you don't have an account, MS cannot just sync the data anywhere... at least yet...
(not for everyone: gog has few AAA games, games are generally single-player offline games)
two independent VMs, never run at same time:
1) linux vm that runs lgogdownloader
https://github.com/Sude-/lgogdownloader
downloads all gog installers to a shared hd device
2) windows 11 vm (installed from windows 11 pro retail usb stick)
* vm has no network interface *
turned off all annoyances. "windows defender out-of-date" hardest to turn off
installed games from shared hd device from #1
play all games offline, no microsoft data collection, no "unity collects data", no worries.
for updates, boot linux vm, update repo on shared hd
for games, boot win 11 vm
OneDrive is treated as a normal app that is installed by default, you can actually just uninstall it through Add or Remove Programs in the Control Panel.
> ( ) Yes
> (•) Remind me in 3 days
` HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Notifications\ Settings\Microsoft.SkyDrive.Desktop\Enabled = 0 (DWORD) `
https://www.urtech.ca/2018/03/solved-gpos-to-disable-notific...
My dad turned it on not knowing what it meant and it completely messed up his workflows and now I have to figure out how to safely disable it and move his files back.
I will remember Microsoft causing this problem for him every time I think of or get asked if someone should use a Microsoft product or service.
One is the many many years old renaming trouble, renaming a file in Windows Explorer inside the OneDrive sometimes select all while I am alread typing extension to the end of the file name, clearing everything with the following keystroke, either resulting in something stupid saved on Enter if I do not realise what is happening (and being mad not remembering what the original name was), or just have to cancel and restart the renaming. Very frequent and annoying.
But a ... lets call it funny, so a funny trouble I recently discovered is that file name completely fine with Wndows is incompatible with OneDrive, OneDriva mandates me to "change the filename! change it!" (with different words but the same tone). What the f! Microsoft is not compatible with itself? : D What a clusterfuck. It is fairly new, I believe there are spaces in fron of the file name that is generated with some software I am trying, I don't care that much, nonessential, but very comedic. I have too much difficulty with using Windows to care with all the trouble and spend any time on those, I work around those, I increasingly give no f. (my work mandates Windows, ah!)
I also seen some sort of message box when a certain software tried to automatically open a newly created file in OneDrive, something like this: "The file http://sharepoint.blablabl/bla/bla/newly_created_file.ext" cannot be found. Whaaaat?! I work with a desktiop only software, it does not even care about internet connection. Saving the file to an ordinary folder works great, opens automatically. Sounds like at some point querying the full path of the file produces an internet address? Again, I give no sht to this crp that much to go ino and investigate and diagnose this hundredths of bug, just to have fruitless conversation a very understanding and very useless support guy or a forum audience suggesting how should I wrap my life around the stupidity of Windows.
This is an instance of Microsoft being evil.
onedrive is not a backup: like all automatic sync systems it is a liability. It may be useful but it is still a liability.
There’s a checkbox, but instead of “Remember my choice” it is “Ask every time.” Diabolical.
If you export a PDF to a OneDrive folder, Office (especially Word) will instead create this file onto OneDrive itself (not local).
Its a 50/50 chance that your local OneDrive will sync it properly especially if you're in a fast workflow (e.g., preparing for a meeting soon with minor amendments) or you wait for several minutes for it to sync or you logon to OneDrive web to get manually download the file.
You pretty much have to export to a non-OneDrive synced folder for PDF export to work on local reliably.
Fortunately for most of us, Linux and MacOS exist. But companies that have built their entire IT infrastructure on Windows really have no clear way out other than to follow Microsoft down the rabbit hole - which is, of course, the whole point of these recent changes.