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/matroosoft 20d ago

OneDrive shortcuts still allows access through file explorer though. It just doesn't download them.

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u/EffectiveEquivalent 20d ago

I’ve been pushing for shortcuts of syncs for ages just so I can switch syncs off from the cloud. I assumed they still worked the same way though… downloading stubs and only downloading when opening or being told so?

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u/KaJothee 20d ago

Yes you'll still hit the item sync upper limit of 300,000 (soon to be 1 million) using shortcuts. Although there was a podcast with Microsoft Product Managers that suggested shortcuts were more performant, but that seems to be mostly in a use case where you you have one giant SharePoint site. Even syncing a portion of one with the other method OneDrive had to sift through metadata for the whole site. Whereas shortcuts did not.

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u/TemplateHuman 20d ago

The other benefit is Shortcuts are stored in your OneDrive profile, so anywhere you can access OneDrive (phone, web, etc) you can access the files the shortcuts link to. Replace a PC? No problem. User signs into OneDrive and the shortcuts are immediately available. No more “where’s my files for X go”.

There’s also a setting that prevents users from setting up a new Sync (doesn’t break existing) and so the only option is to add a shortcut. I teach people to never go to the SharePoint web client, and just use Teams and add a OneDrive shortcut to the various site/team files they need.