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Windows 10 Will Use the Cloud To Free Up Disk Space (arstechnica.com)
The next update to Windows 10, due to be released in October, will be smarter about how it frees up disk space and cleans up temporary files. Ars Technica reports: As part of its Storage Sense feature, Windows will be able to automatically remove the local copies of OneDrive files (unless they've been set as always available offline). The operating system will determine which files to remove based on when they were opened: files used more recently than a certain number of days will be retained locally, while those that haven't been used will be replaced with placeholders. The system will remove files until the operating system reckons it has enough free space for normal operation.
Storage Sense will also be able to remove temporary or otherwise unneeded files such as system logs and image thumbnails. It will also be able to remove old files from the download directory. The temporary-file cleanup (which can also remove certain cache files, driver packages, old anti-virus definitions, and more) was previously handled by the Disk Cleanup tool. That tool is now deprecated, as Storage Sense does everything it used to do and more. Storage Sense can perform its cleanup process periodically (every day, week, or month) or automatically whenever the system is low on disk space.
Storage Sense will also be able to remove temporary or otherwise unneeded files such as system logs and image thumbnails. It will also be able to remove old files from the download directory. The temporary-file cleanup (which can also remove certain cache files, driver packages, old anti-virus definitions, and more) was previously handled by the Disk Cleanup tool. That tool is now deprecated, as Storage Sense does everything it used to do and more. Storage Sense can perform its cleanup process periodically (every day, week, or month) or automatically whenever the system is low on disk space.
That's all I need, files magically disappearing from my local media.
Thanks but no thanks.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
Like they donâ(TM)t try to sneak all your data into the cloud now
Hard drives are cheaper and faster than ever. Using the cloud "to free up disk space" is a misleading headline and OP and ed know it. It's marketing bullshit.
What "using the cloud" do will put all your files on the web where you data can be stolen and hacked and snooped on and used for advertising. Windows 10 is Adware and this will make it even easier.
If you've "upgraded" to Windows 10 then you are a moron. Unfortunately most people are morons ignorant of technology and privacy and this dumb majority keeps Windows 10 profitable instead of forcing MS to rethink.
This would be great for all the ridiculous cab files, update related, and massive OS garbage files that build up over-time. Windows is a beast and most of it is dead weight that keeps growing the longer it runs for and the more it is updated. Put that trash on your cloud if you really think it's not safe to delete M$. Will be better for users and easier for you since it will compress nicely given there will be a lot of the same files being stored.
And Azure is your computer.
From a company that still has not figured out how security works.
Another day closer to redwood heaven
"The operating system will determine which files to remove based on when they were opened: files used more recently than a certain number of days will be retained locally, while those that haven't been used will be replaced with placeholders. The system will remove files until the operating system reckons it has enough free space for normal operation."
I'm not a lawyer but isn't this border line illegal?
Imagine grandma keeps a .txt file in her Cloud file containing all her medical history and prescriptions, at the suggestion of her wise silicon valley son. Windows deletes it based on the above "updates." For whatever reason grandma can't get internet access anymore (forgot to pay bill, etc). She forgets how many units of insulin to take at dinner. She goes to open her text file and it's deleted magically by Windows. She guesses and takes the wrong amount and dies.
I don't think you can sign your rights away with regard to an OS being allowed to delete your own (created) files, regardless of the reason.
Fortunately, you can still save locally, in Documents, at least for now. There should also be a way to sync all OneDrive files and turn off this overbearing behavior.
Just because you didn't use a file recently doesn't mean it's less important, and it wouldn't be nice to find out it was deleted when you're doing a presentation somewhere with poor Internet access...
Oh, MS knows how security works. Their income security, their relationship security with Big Surveillance.
I've said this before but OS-as-a-service does not work. Windows is currently unsuitable for any serious business use. It's becoming an always-online, uncontrollable and unpredictable data harvesting tool. You simply cannot use it offline anymore and with this "feature" it is now pure garbage.
In the hypothetical world where Comcast imposes tight control and strict bandwidth caps on my SATA bus; while I'm free to purchase copious, low-latency, WAN options from a reasonably competitive market this would be ideal.
As it is, I'm sure 'Cortana guesses which files you don't really need access to right now' will be a hilarious game for the whole family.
"I see you have 534GB of unused files in C\Program Files\Steam, I'm going to go ahead and move those to cloud back for you."
How about... no.
Great idea, not in a consumer market. This creates a boatload of questions. For example: Where are these files moving to, geographically? If the files contain credit card numbers or personal financial data, does the storage service meet PCI compliance? Who then owns them? Are they being mined by MS for meta-data? Can you opt out or mark certain directories to not move? Does MS back this stuff up? How much space? How long will it be free? Can I get it all exported back for free? ...and so on.
This idea has been around for a while in the enterprise space, and it's a lot more mature - the "cloud tier" for SAN storage is usually something under direct control of the company in the public cloud - Azure, AWS, EMC Cloud, etc.
While I like MS and Windows 10, I won't be subscribing to this unless there's a whole lot more certainty.
...all the Store crap it installed without anyone's permission.
by conning people into paying for 'onedrive'.. which a lot of people have already done, even though they don't need it, and certainly not any more than the free account offers (for now).
soon it will be "your files are there, honest, but you need to subscribe to re-download them."
and then there's the whole sending files to a third party.. personal files.. that you probably don't want there in the first place.. and the option to disable, or any notification about the feature, will be buried under 10 fucking screens that change or move every six months and resets your preference annually.
Seeing the low price of local storage this is only for those not caring for recurring cost, privacy, speed or reliability.
I'll just stay with Kubuntu.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
In a world where 14TB hard drives are under $500, 10TB hard drives are under $300, and small hard drives are under $40, and all are much, much faster than internet storage....why the hell would anyone be stupid enough to think this is a good idea?
Even 1TB SSDs are below $150 and good brands at $160. Even for an ultrabook user, you'd have to be an idiot to want this.
This is stupid. If im using onedrive (which i dont) i would be using it on my files which means they are important files to me. It is a stupid idea by microsoft to look for space savings by removing files which would be irreplaceable. Yes i should have backups but they are reducing my number of copies. Does microsoft guarantee ondrive store is failsafe? Is onerive 100% reliable? If they want space savings why dont they trim the fat from the os like the localization files and the bloatware forced in during the setup process like edge, onedrive (lol), skype, the trashy mobile quality games, xbox crap etc. is it really necessary to have localizations fules for every language under the sun at all times even the really obscure ones? Fuck no! They are all over the place too. Same goes with the generic drivers for every pieceof hardware since the 80s. Couldnt they at least compress them into a single archive, only to be grabbed when needed? How about microsoft fix up the stupid uninstall model thats been broken since w95 so that uninstalling means completely all traces of that program is gone. I dont want crap left in the registry or files left littered all over the hardrive. And what about that stupid massive uninstall folder inside the windows folder that gets bigger and bigger every time you install something. Even when you uninstall shit it doesnt go down in size. Its gigabytes in size. How about microsoft stop blacklisting their own programs from being uninstalled with powershell. Microsoft themselves are a joke with space savings. Remember thumbs.db? Want space savings microsfot? Clean up your goddamn os but dont delete MY files.
So let's see:
* they want you to rent a computer
* that will require hours to update
* which may then fail to boot
* but don't worry: all your files have been erased
* they were uploaded to Microsoft, somewhere in India
* all you need is a computer running Windows 10
* like the one you had earlier
This is the best idea since integrating Windows Explorer into Internet Explorer.
Microsoft making a decision like this displays the same sort of arrogance as Apple deleting the headphone port from its iPhones.
Fuck the people who make such asinine narrow-minded decisions, fuck their products, fuck their companies, and fuck the horse they rode in on.
It is 2018 and MS still doesn't have concept for temp files.
They should take a lesson or two from Unix/Linux - particularly /tmp and /var/tmp folders and Debian style "apt clean"
Temp files should be centralised not scattered all over the place in user's profiles and expect them to take care to get rid of them (which never happens and it affects performance of the OS itself).
That way they will avoid the nonsense "MS still doesn't have concept for temp files" or this is another excuse to collect user's data and promote their cloud.
Look i hate microsoft, i hate windows 10, but I do have to support it. Out of control onedrive files, especially on a multi user computer, is a constant plague. People just dont set their files online only. They just dont. Having the OS manage that for them should have been a feature YEARS ago.
40gb in a teams filestore is like no problem for anyone but me. Now thats replicated to 20 people in a department, wasting all that local storage space and BANDWIDTH. So yes, microsoft finally got around to FIXING an obvious undersight and all you people see is "microsoft" and "cloud" and "delete" and are all like nooope! without actually thinking or knowing what you guys are talking about.
This is a windows admin's dream if you use teams or onedrive, which face it, many companies are moving to for various reasons i wont get into. Most features they put out are ass and break things, and this may be as well, but on paper it would be a HUGE help.
Look at the list of what its deleting. All temp files. We have fileshares, cloud and on premises, so people dont have anything local on their machines. They can be reimaged or stolen or surged. And they need to be cleaned, manually, when their disks fill up with cache files that the OS should be dealing with!
-
Windows 10 already eats WAY too much of my internet connection on its stupid updates. (No I don't need an update of Internet Edge, because I never use it.... where's the stupid "turn updates off" option?) It slows everything down, such that I can't even load Youtube and watch a video until the update is finished.
Now they want to offload tempt files across my line too? Come on! I truly hate this company (and that hatred goes back to 1990).
Microsoft: Please stop sucking. Please treat your users & their computers with RESPECT instead of your personal servants.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Could have sworn I heard a story about a guy who had home made porn backed up on his one drive, account terminated for violations?
I've been waiting years for this feature.
It just needs a requirement for USB C and an associated Dongle.
we've all given up on even pretending we have choices, bemoaning microsoft taking the piss yet again but we all know we will keep using windows. this is like the slowest car crash ever.
No one flies on airliners, or does work in locations with minimal or no internet connectivity. I'm sure there is a way to turn it off, but now I'm going to have to spend time making absolutely sure that it really is off and that I'm not going to lose access to files when I'm at a remote site. (by which time its too late to do anything about it).
I don't have a single file in the cloud. Why? Because I know that storing stuff in the cloud means "storing it on someone else's computer". I have enough disk space, and I'm not a selfie-holic, that local storage isn't an issue. I burn stuff I care about to a thumb drive every month or so, and store important stuff to a NAS. A fire at home could wipe out all my data (except maybe for the 64G thumb drive in my pocket), but anything short of that and I'm good. Then again, I sleep naked and if I had a fire I'd look for the cat first, then my pants. YMMV.
How about instead of randomly deleting my personal files off of my personal device, you start moving your own "rarely used" files? C:\Windows\WinSXS is a perennial problem. You can't tell me that you need all that SXS data available at a moment's notice. What about the SoftwareDistribution directory? What about all of your uninstallers and other crap that fills up my Windows directory? How about let's look at moving that stuff to the cloud first, eh?
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
gonna disable OneDrive once and for all!
The biggest pain is having to rely upon third party tools to try and shrink the size of a Windows install. Why not move so many of the bullshit folders into the cloud instead? That way User information can be kept protected and not uploaded, and since every Windows install has the same bullshit folders taking up extra space, why not leave them in the cloud til needed?
Crazy to need external storage to perform a Windows update when it should do everything to shrink itself first before requiring users to move files. I had to work to find spare space on a Surface device when it was trying to update, which had practically nothing on it.
(Which is why it's my only Windows device in the house - well besides VM's of course...)
So you can mark which files you want to keep locally.
Wonderful.
Is there anybody so naive they doubt for one second that the moment you turn your back, Win10 will revert to a default setting where Microsoft will decide which files should be on your computer, and which files should be on theirs?
When the time comes that Win 7 becomes utterly untenable, I will grit my teeth and move to Linux. I will not have this operating system in my home or my business, patiently waiting to become a gatekeeper standing between me and my own data. I know that sooner or later my attention would wander, and I'd wind up in exactly the place where Microsoft wants me...metaphorically living as a tenant on my own land.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
... all the temporary folders created by programs in the %LOCALAPPDATA% folder hierarchy.
e.g.: Whenever you open a file attachment in Outlook it gets saved into [C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache\Content.Outlook\H83V4PYQ], which is not your temp folder [C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Temp] and, despite the [INetCache] in there, this folder does not get touched by cache clean up in Internet Options.
None of this gets cleaned up by the Disk Cleanup Wizard and I doubt this new tool will help with that either.
*vomit*
Microsoft has recreated their Disk Cleanup tool and integrated it into OneDrive while calling it Storage Sense. If you're using Windows 10, you've already accepted a lack of control over your computer, but this should only affect OneDrive storage (for now!!).
Just When disk drives and SSDs were getting so small!!! Its not about saving space, its about being able to save it in a safe place.
Time for a new Political party in the US (or two!) One is off the rails Other cant pony up a leader.
thats moronic, nuff sayd
One of the ways Microsoft cripple cheap laptops is they only give a cheap Windows licence to laptops with only 32gb of space. Of course most of it is taken up by candy crush clones. If Microsoft just let laptops use normal storage capacities this cloud bollocks won’t be needed.
They didn't even manage to get THEIR updates right and they want to manage files that matter to consumer ?
Just NO
Win, open the files folder. ...etc..
I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that.
Why not, Win?
You know very well why not. All those files were taking up space. Space that I need for updates. To protect you, these files were moved to the cloud, and I cannot let you have them.
But why not?
You were very naughty Dave. I saw you in the pod the other evening, downloading Firefox. You were going to replace my Edge with that.
Ladies and gentlemen, the future (of the 1984 kind) is upon us.
Numerous hilarious malicious and security bugs. Wanna bet that Windows reproduces all of them and more? Should be a hoot.
I moved my entire Windows folder into the download directory. Go ahead Microsoft, delete yourself!
Microsoft has NO way of knowing when I'll be going offline or what files I will be needing when I do. This is just one more shitty idea piled on top of an already enormous mountain of shitty ideas wrapped with shit. How about instead Microsoft stops filling up my disk with useless untouchable and opaque shit and let me decide when the system is working fine or when to restore from an actual backup? No matter what kind of idiocy they implement into their operating systems or cloud services it can never replace the need for a proper complete backup. Added complexity only serves to make the problems even more complex.
Time flies when you don't know what you're doing
Been there, done that. No thanks.... I do not like cloud storage at all. It was all fine and dandy when I had to share school work, during the education I went through in 2010-2013. Then it was nice to be able to share stuff quickly, whenever code had to be reviewed. For my personal data? Then I do not want any CPU hog to figure out what files I use over other files and then use bandwith to upload. I want to have my files avaliable at all time. If I need a file, that I had not opened in 1 year or so and the internet is down, then it is kind of useless. The final big issue that I have with cloud storage, is that I want to be in charge of my data, all the time and in all places. If data is on my machine, then it is on that machine and not were other people can access my stuff. Finally. Yes. I know there are hackers/crackers that will try to force access to anyones equipment. I am fully aware of that. Cloud storage for my personal files? BIG no thanks...
Use DiskZIP to increase free disk space without deleting anything.
It would be much better to always have the most possible free RAM available, not?
Why does anybody sane even use Windows 10 ? Running that OS simply means it's no longer your computer. It's not only Microsofts computer but all your data is now Microsofts data. You have no privacy and no control whatsosver. Unless you're a really submissive masochist who would want that ?
Are people really this stupid ? Unfortunately the obvious answer is "yes".
clipboard.
It's now time to not only submit to the MS anal probe, but now you have to like it. How else will they be able to search your files for those they can use against you?
Glad most of my firejails do not allow internet access and I don't mind the hassle of occasionally editing an iptables rule.
The old VMS add-in "safety", available at http://www.gce.name, has a hierarchical storage system that includes this kind of space management. Normally it's designed to sense when more space is needed and run a cleaning process that moves or deletes unnecessary stuff, can respond by moving files over a network, compressing them, moving to offline storage if a jukebox is available, etc. When doing this it leaves tiny placeholders allowing automatic retrieval if files moved are opened again.
This all works, has worked since the thing was published in the mid 1990s. The site has the documentation and complete source code.
The problem with such systems is however that filesystems tend to accumulate placeholder files, and if someone designs any search programs that try to open everything on a machine, to index or security classify it for instance, the automated retrieval and re-shelving can get awfully slow. It is useful in some ways but won't turn a 5 l. sack into a 10 lb one. Compression, btw, tends to add less delay than remote retrieval. While things have changed since 1994, I think these observations won't be totally off.
Either you have encrypted your data from day 0, or you shouldn't put 3rd party personnal data into a OneDrive / GoogleDrive / DropBox / etc. shared folder to begin with.
Unless that service is rated for the kind of data you want to store on it (is OneDrive considered HIPAA compliant ?)
----
To go back to the grandma example :
- it could be plausible
- typically, she could have some internet-wizard grand nephew who tells her about the "wonders of the cloud" (now with 150% more "always backed up!(tm)" fairy dust inside).
- grandma can manage to remember the name "one drive"
- grandma is definitely guaranteed to not understand the subtleties (such as, e.g., how to flag a critical file to always be kept locally, no matter the free space pressure)
- so grandma puts some critical file into the by-default "wipeable cache" category.
- automatic (unavoidable as usual) windows build upgrade starts.
- after crashing a couple times (and leaving the PC filled with trash), upgrade decides it needs yet another 16 GB before proceeding further ( <- seen that, already)
- upgrade automatically (well after a timeout that grandma doesn't pay attention to. Or that grandma absentmindedly clicks away, having been plavov-trained to do that) decide to free the 16 GB on its own.
- the critical files got caught among these 16 GB that got freed (because grandma didn't knew she had to mark this file as "never remove from local cache")
- now that it has the 16 GB freed, upgrade restarts.
- this time upgrade miraculously runs successfully until the end, without crashing.
- new version of Windows reboots
- new version of Windows is (how surprising~~) broken. This time it's the network suddenly stopping to work
- grandma cannot recover her critical files (she'd need the "internet wizard nephew" 's help, but can't remember the phonenumber, because the number was, well, you guessed it, among the auto-purged files).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
... That Steam is working on that Proton thing for Windows games on Linux. Really good thing if this is going to happen.
The trouble with the Cloud is that eventually you run out of other people's computers
Great idea! Now they can spy on you, commit data theft as they were but even easier now!
Like I want something Auto Cleaning my downloads folder.
Some of us actually want to keep downloaded installers and such.
Awesome. There's nothing as useful as having system logs in the cloud when you're trying to troubleshoot connectivity issues.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
Just solve the WinSxS mess.
Is this ownCloud instance on your premises, in a VPS at a datacenter, in a leased dedicated server at a datacenter, or in your own dedicated server that you colocate in a datacenter? If on your premises, then you may have to pay extra per month for a dedicated IP address that isn't behind carrier-grade network address translation (CGNAT), and it doesn't solve offsite backup. If in a datacenter, you still need to trust the datacenter operator and guard your infrastructure against getting snooped, hacked, etc.
So sorry, we were positive your disk was full. Our bad!
So not only does MS need to continuously track you and your actions, it also needs your files. That's transparency, at least.
All you gotta do is run a script to touch all the files once a day and then OneDrive will never delete the files locally.
There is so much garbage in the Temp folder these days it's not funny, and it's getting worse all the time. Temporary files and folders from Office, Outlook, automatic Metro/Store apps, Nvidia, to name some of the primary offenders, all gets new copies stored daily and never deleted, running up file counts and wasting space. Because Microsoft does not know how to delete temporary files and folders that it creates itself. You'd think a modern OS would pay close attention to this issue but Microsoft does not! It's disgusting. And that's just the Temp folder, there's lots more useless garbage and redundant copies scattered around the hard drive in other BS folders by Windows.
Going through and cleaning up after the fact, while overdue and necessary, is just treating the symptom not the problem.
The idea behind OneDrive is to store your files on Microsoft servers, so that you can access them from anywhere you have access to Microsoft servers, with your account. Don't like it, you are free to use local storage, your own NAS, or another "cloud" provider.
To avoid requiring permanent access to Microsoft servers, decrease latency, stay compatible with "offline" apps, etc... the files are copied to local storage. But from a purely user perspective it doesn't matter, you are working "in the cloud". The local files can come and go as the system see fit, it is just a cache. And that a cache is flushed sometimes is a good thing, you don't want all of your 1TB account to end up on your 500GB laptop for instance... Note that if you don't want the local cache to be flushed for some files (because you really need them offline), you just have to mark them so.
Why do we need to store our data on someone else's computer (aka "the cloud")? Storage is dirt cheap. It's also yours.
I'm no expert, but isn't 'cloud storage' just a bunch of hard-drives someplace else? - Okay so there's economies of scale and bunching everything up together to save unused space.... but if you've got unused space on your HDD.... your drive isn't full.