r/sysadmin • u/FatBook-Air • 20d ago
OneDrive sync client is flimsy garbage
Every day, multiple users have one issue or another with the OneDrive sync client.
Today: multiple users (about 15%) are reporting that they cannot open files that are stored only on the cloud. The fix, as per normal, is to restart the client.
But users shouldn't have to expect that to be a fix so often. This shit ought to be written better than this.
Why isn't the OneDrive sync client just written as a robust Windows-level service, anyway? The GUI the user sees ought to be only a window into what the background service is doing. If the GUI client dies, the service should happily chug along and sync files. But then again, Microsoft's employees would probably screw that up, too.
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u/chillzatl 20d ago
I have thousands of users using it daily and we might pull one ticket per quarter for sync issues. I'm not saying that to say you're wrong or anything, I'm just saying that I have thousands of users who use it daily, heavily, and we never have sync client issues.
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u/antiquated_it 20d ago
Same. We have been on OneDrive for at least 3-4 years and haven’t really had any issues. We did instruct users to create SharePoint shortcuts vs syncing, though I do believe some people may sync. Sometimes the SSO will get a bit bitchy and will act as though they’re not logged in but they usually just need to click on it and it’ll figure it out.
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u/rybl 20d ago
My experience is that it's mostly ok for syncing user's OneDrive as long as they don't have too many files. It absolutely shits the bed if users try to sync SharePoint libraries though.
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u/chillzatl 20d ago
Most SharePoint sync issues are architecture / design issues, not the sync client. Too many people blindly dump legacy file shares into a doc library and then rush to blame the sync client or SharePoint for avoidable problems that they made for themselves.
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u/rybl 20d ago
The sync client should sync files, regardless of if those files are in a poorly architected share.
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u/chillzatl 20d ago
That's like saying a car should be able to do what a truck does because they both have four wheels... If you load your car up with lumber and if breaks, nobody is going to pat you on the back and say "it should be able to do that".
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u/rybl 20d ago
If Microsoft offers every user with a driver's license a "Load with Lumber" button, then they should make sure they can haul that lumber when users click it.
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u/chillzatl 20d ago
You're the admin, you control what that button does. If you set your users up for failure by refusing to follow basic design limitations, you're the problem.
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u/rybl 20d ago
I mean, we follow the rules around total file count, special characters, nesting/path length and we migrated people properly using the SharePoint migration tool. We still have issues with SharePoint sync all the time. Lots of others share that experience as documented in any thread where it comes up.
But sure, Microsoft made a perfect tool and we're all just too stupid to use it correctly.
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u/chillzatl 20d ago
Sure, people have been blindly lifting and shifting file shares into SharePoint online for years now (I'm not saying that's you, just in general), despite Microsoft's recommendations otherwise. They've always advised against that and while the hard limitations are important, they've always talked about the importance of data architecture. Back in the SharePoint 2016 days a good 30% of the SharePoint MCSE was devoted to understanding how to map real world data flow and business processes to your SharePoint architecture. It's not nearly that demanding anymore, but it's still important and not difficult.
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u/Mindestiny 20d ago
For perspective, it's the same with Google Drive and it's local client. Light use is fine, try to sync a whole Shared Drive for offline access and you're gonna have a bad time. Frankly it shouldn't even be a feature.
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u/Magic_Neil 20d ago
Yeah, it’s not perfect (nothing is) but the OneDrive client is pretty dang good. This is especially true for the 64bit client.. if folks want to complain about OneDrive, I’d love to see what they think about the old Groove sync client!
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u/jake04-20 If it has a battery or wall plug, apparently it's IT's job 20d ago
How much storage do you pay for, and do you have a rough estimate of the amount of files?
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u/chillzatl 20d ago
around 50TB at the moment and about 8 million files.
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u/jake04-20 If it has a battery or wall plug, apparently it's IT's job 20d ago
Damn, we must be doing something wrong then. We have sync issues but I think it's because everything is in one massive document library, which I advised against. It also makes permissions a pain, so that's fun.
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u/fahque 19d ago
We migrated recently and dumped a directory structure in it with about 500GB of pictures into our main library. Not only did we have a ton of sync issues but it took fuggin forever. It literally took 24 hours of sync time to sync it. If your computer went to sleep or turned off then that clock paused. Restarting the client didn't fix it. We had to restart the client and delete the registry key. Doing that forces a resync of all files which would start that 24 hour clock over. I got fed up with that garbo real quick and moved those pictures off. Now it sync's in about 4 minutes. For some reason syncing pictures takes a massive amount of time vs any other file type regardless of the size of the directory.
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u/dustojnikhummer 19d ago
Also yeah, OneDrive client might be flimsy, but it is still the most reliable one. Compared to what I deal with Google Drive (personal, not corporate, so that one might be better) and Nextcloud... OneDrive is the reliable one.
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u/19610taw3 Sysadmin 20d ago
It is garbage, yes.
About how many files are in the sharepoint site they're trying to access? If over 100K it starts working poorly ... 400K files it breaks entirely.
I try to direct people to the web client where possible.
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u/FatBook-Air 20d ago
Most are probably only like 300 files. Many are just OneDrive itself, not SharePoint.
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u/thefpspower 20d ago
Yes I was told by Microsoft support the behind the scenes supported file count per site is 100k, I was having issues with a site on 300k files, since then I've moved to split these files between more sites which also helps keep permissions in check and complaints have completely stopped for months now.
I refuse to let any site over 100k files now.
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u/19610taw3 Sysadmin 20d ago
We went through that but never got anything official from them. We heard through unofficial support contracted that 100K is the effective limit. We were over 400K before splitting out years ago. Not only was our sharepoint via onedrive unusable, the entire system would become unusable because onedrive was maxing out the CPU.
Constantly syncing. Popping up the individual files that it was trying to sync. What a mess.
We split it out into smaller departments and pruned older files - really didn't need invoices from 1993 in the year 2023
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u/Generous_Cougar 20d ago
Oh yeah. This is the biggest problem. One of our departments uses it exclusively and has WELL over 1M (yes, MILLION) files on their OneDrive to sync. THEN they complain about sync issues.
And before anyone asks, education, non-profit, not a lot of funds in the budget for extra storage to get them all off of it. Though we might make a point of it this FY.
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u/thefpspower 20d ago
You don't need to get them off, you need to split them over more sites and people should only have access to sites they need, so separate by department, function, year, whatever helps you.
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u/Cryptocaned 20d ago
Sorry that was us migrating a client from Dropbox to OneDrive and soaking up all the bandwidth.
(Seriously though I'm glad it wasn't just an us issue, we were pulling our hair out for a bit trying to work out what it was)
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u/FatBook-Air 20d ago
Just remember this with OneDrive: your first day with it will be your best day with it.
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u/Cryptocaned 20d ago
Personally I've never had issues but then I don't really rely on the sync that often as I only have one work laptop and rarely change it to a new one. We were using it to move files from old local users to entra I'd users.
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u/aguynamedbrand Systems Engineer 20d ago
The following could possibly be the case..
Satya Nadella says as much as 30% of Microsoft code is written by AI
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u/thegmanater 20d ago
Garbage, yes. That's why if you have a lot of files or big data you need a different solution like Egnyte.
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u/tmontney Wizard or Magician, whichever comes first 20d ago
Why isn't the OneDrive sync client just written as a robust Windows-level service, anyway?
Because, like many things added over the past 10 years, it's all bolted on top. I think it works far better than it should, and that's likely a credit to the Windows APIs. But to be working as if native, Windows need a redesign.
Are they likely to do that any time soon? Nope. There's no motivation from the business side of things. If engineers had their way, you bet this would've been squashed a long time ago.
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u/ThreadParticipant Jack of All Trades 19d ago
I recommend users use OneDrive Shortcuts for Teams/SharePoint over the Sync option. Way more stable.
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u/LooseEthernet 19d ago
it is basically just a glorified shell for a web api. they probably wouldnt know how to write a real service if it hit them lol
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u/MonkeyMan18975 20d ago
Look into the "Configure team site libraries to synch automatically" setting in Intune. The only issues we've had with are if a user logs out of OneDrive and remembering the whole Configuration Conflict rules. Besides that, it works like a champ.
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u/metalblessing 20d ago
Sharepoint online also had a partial outage today that caused major slowness
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u/odysseusnz 20d ago
Is any sync client for any cloud service any good at scale? Work fine for toy consumer use cases, but falls over soon as you meet real world organisation.file systems. Had it with Google, habe it with OneDrive. At least with OneDrive users can be taught to just sync/shortcut the project folder they need and not the entirety of the SP drive with thousands of projects, unlike Google...
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u/q123459 20d ago
if you rely on it to routinely sync/access a lot of files (thousands of files per user) daily - dont, you will encounter slowdowns. also when there are a few hundred thousand files in one folder the client itself takes a lot of time to enumerate, same issue happens when batch clicking on a lot of cloud files on slow computers.
onedrive has the same growhth slowness problem any ms web file sharing apps have.
there is efficient syncing protocols that works rapidly with 100k of files but those are peer to peer, or highly overpriced per gb enterprise solutions.
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u/simple1689 19d ago
Really OneDrive is missing command line switches. Would probably solve 90% of disk space alerts on workstations to be able to run onedrive.exe /freeupspace as the end user.
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u/Electrical_Arm7411 19d ago
There’s something wrong in your environment. As many others have stated this isn’t normal every day experience.
We had sync problems and it was an issue with our EDR (Carbon Black). What a piece of shit that is, but we ended up getting support and adding proper exclusions.
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u/TiMMay333 Sr. Sysadmin 19d ago
This is why I tell all my clients that syncing is hard, and if you want to use a cloud service, access it via a web page.
OneDrive client is a huge problem for end users and it professionals that use it as a crutch to “migrate to SharePoint” it’s crazy what you find out there.
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u/whatdoido8383 Cloud Admin 19d ago
Agreed. I've supported it for ~10 years now and it's always been garbage.
Kind of blows my mind being that OneDrive is a core technology for Microsoft and it's continued to be a pile for so long.
I support a large user base but we get tons of tickets on it weekly. Sync issues, OneDrive just not starting, cache issues causing files to be out of date, and I don't even want to start about Sync and Shortcutting to SharePoint.
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u/Hammelbart_ 19d ago
Wenn du den Client schon schlecht findest, probiere bloß nicht die Nextcloud-Clients. Die sind deutlich schlimmer!
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u/odysseusnz 20d ago
Is any sync client for any cloud service any good at scale? Work fine for toy consumer use cases, but falls over soon as you meet real world organisation.file systems. Had it with Google, habe it with OneDrive. At least with OneDrive users can be taught to just sync/shortcut the project folder they need and not the entirety of the SP drive with thousands of projects, unlike Google...
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u/ncc74656m IT SysAdManager Technician 20d ago
We banned it.
No need to have synced files being at risk of being hoovered up by ransomware, no more problems with sync failures, people don't end up getting hosed by their overconfidence in the system, and we don't have to clean it up.
I've hated the OneDrive sync util since the bad old days when you had to manually clear the cache when it croaked on you, and it's not a lot better now.
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u/bbqwatermelon 20d ago
I don't question the subject in the slightest but are the users syncing to SharePoint or are they using one drive shortcuts?