Onedrive complications

[pyrotechnomimus]

For normal files the program is working just fine.  However, whenever I move my Onedrive location to the drivepool I immediately run into issues.  The files become hidden system files (I think this is dealing with symbolic links through the smart file technology of 8.1) and that is causing no end of issues.  I can't use my Onedrive as I was with storage spaces.

 

I've done tons of troubleshooting on my own.  I can use Onedrive in the default location on my C: drive, I can do it through the enclosure I have so long as the disk is standalone and not part of the pool, but as soon as I move the location to the drivepool (even a new pool) I have problems.  I've created new profiles and many other things to try and fix this including being on tech support chat with Microsoft a few times to see if they know how to work around this, and I haven't been able to find this particular issue sitting around anywhere in the forums.

 

Essentially, I can see my folder structure, but all files are hidden.  Viewing hidden files allows me to see them, but they are just symbolic links that don't work (if I doubelclick to open the operation fails).  I can remove attrib of hidden and they become visible, like they should, but they still aren't real files they are the 8.1's smart files, and that means they still don't open as they aren't synced to the system.  I've tried setting everything to offline, it still doesn't work. 

 

I definitely like the ease of moving drives in and out of the pool without losing data.  As a long time user of Storage Spaces I can tell you that there's plenty of problems with MSFT's built in technology, but if I can't move my Onedrive folder over I'm going to have lots of other problems as I live out of that folder.

 

Any help would be much appreciated.  Thanks.

[Erase]

Has there been any update to this, its been a year so hopefully there has been some progress or resolution.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Unfortunately, it does look like Windows 8 (and 8.1, specifically) does something "weird" with the OneDrive folders that StableBit DrivePool doesn't support.

And we can definitely reproduce the issue.

 

I've flagged the issue for Alex, and we'll look into the issue.

https://stablebit.com/Admin/IssueAnalysis/13421

[bsjelin]

I also have the same issue. My guess is its pulling the "online only" files and creating a loop somewhere because duplication just filled up all my available space with OneDrive.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

I also have the same issue. My guess is its pulling the "online only" files and creating a loop somewhere because duplication just filled up all my available space with OneDrive.

It very much could be doing that.

 

Windows 8.x with OneDrive uses a special "reparse" point to map the files to the disk. Unfortunately, it looks like the Pool doesn't properly support this new type yet.  

 

So, please avoid using OneDrive on the pool until we are able to fix this issue.

[bsjelin]

Is there any time frame for correcting the issues? I was going to purchase the software entirely to use WITH onedrive - but if its not ready I'll go ahead and migrate everything over to StorageSpaces.

 

You guys have amazing software though! I wish I could use it, its just unfortunately not something I can use with my current setup.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Unfortunately, no I can't give a time frame. 

Alex is the developer, and the one that handles this. Also, depending on exactly how this is implemented, it could be a five minute fix or it could take a month to fix. Or longer. It's hard to be able to tell until we start messing with it.

 

I'll bug Alex about it this week though.

[bsjelin]

Ok that's cool. Thanks for your help! I'll try to keep working on it from my end to see if I can make it work. I love the product so far and REALLY want to stick with it.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Ok that's cool. Thanks for your help! I'll try to keep working on it from my end to see if I can make it work. I love the product so far and REALLY want to stick with it.

Well, the issue is only with OneDrive on Windows 8 or 8.1. So if you use Windows 7, that should work fine (tested in a VM and seems to work just fine).

 

However, in the meanwhile... move the folder into the PoolPart folder on one of the pooled disks. Then create a File Placement rule to keep the files on JUST that disk. Also, set OneDrive to download everything (so it's all local, and on the disk)

This should allow you to keep the file in the pool and accessible. And hopefully, should duplicate it properly to another drive (the hopeful is for the "properly" bit, as the pool will definitely duplicate it if it's enabled).

[sean10780]

Any update on this? I tried to use one drive on one of my pools and one drive stopped functioning and would not start up properly. I moved it back off the pool and worked without issue. Would be nice to be able to keep one drive files in the pool. I'm not even duplicating mine, just needed it moved there because there is more storage there than on my C drive.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Sean,

 

Sorry, but no, there hasn't been any update on this, unfortunately.

Alex has been very busy working on StableBit CloudDrive, but we plan on getting to this and other issues in the near feature.

Unfortunately, I can't give you an ETA, but I will bring this up to Alex again, and see if we can get the issue fixed sooner, rather than later.

 

 

However, if you need to move the OneDrive storage off of the C:\ drive, you could move it to one of the disks that are in the pool. There is no issue with that, other than the fact that the storage would be counted as "Other" data on the disk, and count against the usable space for the pool.

However, depending on how much data you have on OneDrive, that may not be an issue for you.

[Philmatic]

I wouldn't recommend Alex spend any time fixing this as even Microsoft have given up on the Windows 8/8.1 way of syncing OneDrive. Windows 10 will use a separate executable that syncs directories, like the client for Windows 7 did, versus use the junction points and symbolic links that Windows 8/8.1 uses.

 

As a user, I MUCH prefer the Windows 8/8.1 way of doing it, but I guess there are issues with it under the hood.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

I wouldn't recommend Alex spend any time fixing this as even Microsoft have given up on the Windows 8/8.1 way of syncing OneDrive. Windows 10 will use a separate executable that syncs directories, like the client for Windows 7 did, versus use the junction points and symbolic links that Windows 8/8.1 uses.

 

As a user, I MUCH prefer the Windows 8/8.1 way of doing it, but I guess there are issues with it under the hood.

Well, good to know at least, but we would still like to fix it if possible.

 

As for issues under the hood, I wouldn't be surprised if it caused a bunch of issues with antivirus software and/or access issues (causing excessive bandwidth usage).

[moe120]

any news on this ?

2016-05 now, i am using windows 10 and started to go with onedrive (folder on the pool) recently but i found that it is doing endless loops of "checking for updated files" and "applying updates" over and over again.

Random folders that were labeled with the green checkmark get the sync symbol and vice versa.

Could this have something to do with the missing VSS support ? (i stumbled across this vss issue when my backups started failing after using drivepool, finally found a non-vss backup solution with planned and incremental backups (aomei) but what about drivepool?)

[Christopher (Drashna)]

No there hasn't, sorry. 

 

It's not been a top priority.  And it may result in us just outright blocking the functionality. 

 

Especially since the push to Windows 10, and that Alex has been hard working on StableBit CloudDrive, we haven't gotten to it. 

 

However, I'll bring this up to Alex directly, to see if we can get this looked into soon.