Skydrive tray icon is back
- Thread starter Ruffles
- Start date
benjitek
Active Member
It's a good start, but I much preferred it a bit less integrated with the OS prior to the Windows 8.1 update. Ever since the loss of the separate app to control it, I've never felt confident it actually was working. Now at least there's somewhat a visual indication, but nowhere near as functional as before...
I initially was using offline mode as Skydrive was new and I didn't trust it's reliability, but have recently switched back to online only to save space on my SP2... so far so good. I do enjoy having access to all the files from all of my devices, including my Android phone. I do however keep everything backed up offline on my main machine.
benjitek
Active Member
I use it offline, but I have the 512gb SP2 -- I've helped others set theirs up on 256gb or smaller ultrabooks and they have no choice but to use the files online, with just some of their folders offline. Nice to have the flexibility, though I preferred it when it was handled through a separate app. The 'new' way, settings often undo themselves and I'm never fully confident SkyDrive is working as I've set it up to work -- find myself checking the settings once a week or so.
I only use Sky/OneDrive for files and OneNote Notebooks (<20GB in total). All media is on an SD card. So I have the "Access all files offline" setting to On. Until I reboot when it resets itself to Off. And that's on several different Windows 8.1 devices. Something's very broken in Sky/OneDriveland. It's a little tiresome to have to launch the TIFKAM app and toggle the setting again after each reboot. And if I forget then it just sits there and files I think are in my Sky/OneDrive aren't.
It should work as advertised or they should stop providing it as a service. They'd not get away with selling a physical item that didn't function as it should.
What I've also noticed just this week is that I've two Win7 PC's sat at home that I rarely actually log on to. I checked their status and both stopped syncing around the time 8.1 was released. Additionally, launching the SkyDrive app on either of them can't be done (it just pops up and says it's stopped working after a few seconds). Then I deleted the local Sky/OneDrive database and hey-ho they both fired back up and started syncing quite merrily. Downside of that though is that my 8.1 devices are now totally confused.
I'm bored of constantly resetting the local cache/profile and re-downloading just under 20GB of files on each device every couple of weeks.
It used to work just fine. Across many devices. Now it's cack.
It should work as advertised or they should stop providing it as a service. They'd not get away with selling a physical item that didn't function as it should.
What I've also noticed just this week is that I've two Win7 PC's sat at home that I rarely actually log on to. I checked their status and both stopped syncing around the time 8.1 was released. Additionally, launching the SkyDrive app on either of them can't be done (it just pops up and says it's stopped working after a few seconds). Then I deleted the local Sky/OneDrive database and hey-ho they both fired back up and started syncing quite merrily. Downside of that though is that my 8.1 devices are now totally confused.
I'm bored of constantly resetting the local cache/profile and re-downloading just under 20GB of files on each device every couple of weeks.
It used to work just fine. Across many devices. Now it's cack.
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benjitek
Active Member
Couldn't agree more -- I have 200gb of space at no charge for the next 6 years, wish it worked more reliably :-(
What amazes me as much as anything with SkyDrive is that MS file history does not back this folder up. For reasons unknown to me on several occasions, in a relatively short span of time, I found many folders and files that would just go missing. Sometimes entire folders sometimes files within a folder. But no reason why. And since SkyDrive was installed on both of my computers it would sync and then files and folders were gone everywhere. Thankfully I was also using an external backup program and was able to restore but like one of the other posters here I have since completely abandoned my 200 GB of free space.
FWIW I've also had problems with the SkyDrive folders on my SP2.
My cloud folders (set to be available offline) include Documents, Pictures, Music, Videos, Downloads, etc, which I added to the corresponding Libraries in Windows Explorer. For example the Documents Library lists the SkyDrive Documents folder first (and as the default save/public save location), then the local Documents folder in second place.
I also enabled HomeGroup sharing, though it only seems to apply to local folders and not the SkyDrive folders (can anyone confirm)?
Now, here's what I think caused my SkyDrive syncing problems (YMMV)... By default all my profile subfolders are supposed to inherit permissions from the parent (C:\Users\[profile]) which grant full control to: SYSTEM, Administrators group, and my own account.
But from time to time, my SkyDrive Documents folder somehow got modified to disable permission inheritance, and instead had 3 new permissions added which if I remember correctly were: Administrators group, my own account, and the HomeUsers group. It didn't make sense to me since, even with the HomeUsers permission added, HomeGroup sharing does not seem to see SkyDrive folders at all. More importantly, I think the missing SYSTEM permission was causing SkyDrive to get stuck all the time.
What's strange is that none of my other SkyDrive folders ever got changed like this, only Documents. And whenever it happened, I noticed that my Documents Library also got changed so that the SkyDrive Documents folder got moved to second place, and the local Documents folder got set to be the default public save location.
More importantly, file/folder changes would get stuck syncing. And half the time when I booted up, the SkyDrive folder tree would be missing on the left-hand pane of Windows Explorer. And now that the latest Windows 8.1 update has added a SkyDrive icon on the system tray, I could see that it would get stuck on syncing status, or it would say everything's updated when it actually wasn't.
Sometimes I was able to make piecemeal progress by manually removing and re-adding files that were stuck, or renaming folders to get their status updated. By mainly, resetting the SkyDrive Documents folder back to the inherited permissions was what got SkyDrive back to normal behavior.
I'm not sure what caused the permission change in the first place. It could be something to do with some software installations, since it had occurred more often in the beginning when I was setting up the SP2. It had seemed to stabilize for awhile, until I had to factory reset my SP2 and started with software installs again...
My cloud folders (set to be available offline) include Documents, Pictures, Music, Videos, Downloads, etc, which I added to the corresponding Libraries in Windows Explorer. For example the Documents Library lists the SkyDrive Documents folder first (and as the default save/public save location), then the local Documents folder in second place.
I also enabled HomeGroup sharing, though it only seems to apply to local folders and not the SkyDrive folders (can anyone confirm)?
Now, here's what I think caused my SkyDrive syncing problems (YMMV)... By default all my profile subfolders are supposed to inherit permissions from the parent (C:\Users\[profile]) which grant full control to: SYSTEM, Administrators group, and my own account.
But from time to time, my SkyDrive Documents folder somehow got modified to disable permission inheritance, and instead had 3 new permissions added which if I remember correctly were: Administrators group, my own account, and the HomeUsers group. It didn't make sense to me since, even with the HomeUsers permission added, HomeGroup sharing does not seem to see SkyDrive folders at all. More importantly, I think the missing SYSTEM permission was causing SkyDrive to get stuck all the time.
What's strange is that none of my other SkyDrive folders ever got changed like this, only Documents. And whenever it happened, I noticed that my Documents Library also got changed so that the SkyDrive Documents folder got moved to second place, and the local Documents folder got set to be the default public save location.
More importantly, file/folder changes would get stuck syncing. And half the time when I booted up, the SkyDrive folder tree would be missing on the left-hand pane of Windows Explorer. And now that the latest Windows 8.1 update has added a SkyDrive icon on the system tray, I could see that it would get stuck on syncing status, or it would say everything's updated when it actually wasn't.
Sometimes I was able to make piecemeal progress by manually removing and re-adding files that were stuck, or renaming folders to get their status updated. By mainly, resetting the SkyDrive Documents folder back to the inherited permissions was what got SkyDrive back to normal behavior.
I'm not sure what caused the permission change in the first place. It could be something to do with some software installations, since it had occurred more often in the beginning when I was setting up the SP2. It had seemed to stabilize for awhile, until I had to factory reset my SP2 and started with software installs again...
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