- A Redditor moved a huge plate of data from old drive to a new
- They used OneDrive as a centerpiece of a poorly thoughtful strategy that left all data in Microsoft’s Cloud Service temporarily
- When they came to download the data they were locked out of OneDrive and can’t get Microsoft -Support to solve this problem
A precaution, shared on Reddit, tells the story of a Windows PC owner who used OneDrive to store 30 years of value from their data and lost the party when their Microsoft account was locked without any obvious way of regaining access.
This is an ugly sounding situation (highlighted by Neowin) to say the mild with the loss of what is described as three decades of “irreplaceable photos and work”, which was transferred to OneDrive as a temporary storage facility.
The idea that Redditor had was that they had to move the huge collection of files from several old drives, where they were stored for a large new drive, and OneDrive was chosen as the centerpiece of this data immigration journey.
So they moved all the files from the old drives on Microsoft’s Cloud storage service and were prepared to transfer the data to the new drive as they ran into a huge stumble block. Redditor was suddenly locked out of their Microsoft account (and therefore OneDrive and all Microsoft services).
Now this is not a sensible way to manage this data transfer, of course (and I come back to outline why in a moment, in case you are not sure), but the point here is that the error happened and the Redditor can’t get any joy at all from Microsoft in trying to solve the problem.
In their Reddit posts that get a lot of attention, they say, “Microsoft suspended my account without warning, reason or any legitimate use. I have submitted the observance form 18 times – eighteen – and every time I get an automated answer that does not lead anywhere. No human contact. No actual help.
They continue: “This not only feels unethical, but potentially illegal, especially in light of consumer protection legislation. You can’t just keep someone’s whole digital life hostage without proper process, no warning and no accountability,” Adding that Microsoft is a “kafkaesque black hole of company’s negligence.”
Analysis: Microsoft should make it better
Okay, then first up, very quickly – because I don’t want to work with the mistakes made by the unfortunate redditor – this is not a good way to continue with a drift walk.
When transferring a large plate of data like this, never have a single error point in the process. By which I mean to push all the data into the cloud, on OneDrive and have it as the only copy. That is obviously the core of the problem here, because once the user was locked out of OneDrive, they did not have access to their data at all.
When performing such an operation, or as a general rule for any data, always keep more copies. It would typically be the original data on your device, a backup on a separate external drive at home (preferably two drives, actually) and an off-site copy in a cloud storage cabinet like OneDrive. The point is that if you lose the original data, you can resort to, for example, the external drive, but if it has also gone to the big tech cemetery in the sky somehow, you can go to the other drive (or cloud).
Either way, you get the point, but the Redditor chances this way of doing things – to argue without a doubt that it was fine to rely solely on OneDrive – but clearly, it wasn’t the case.
There are a number of problems with the scenario presented here where Microsoft has come under the standards that a customer would rightly expect.
Why did this happen?
First, there is the fact that the Microsoft account was simply locked without any notification or notice of why. The OneDrive user can only guess why this ban was adopted (and the obvious guess is that some copyrighted material or other content that was in violation of Microsoft’s policy was marked in the uploaded files that would trigger the account to be automatically locked). It is worth making it clear that we (obviously) have no idea the content of this data.
Secondly, with this that has happened, the most worrying part here is Redditor’s description of how they want to beat their head against a wall in trying to talk to Microsoft’s support staff about how to solve this. After all, this is essentially all of their lives’ value of data, and there must be some way to find out at least what the problem is – and give the person who has been locked a chance to explain and potentially regain access.
For everything we know, it may be a mistake that has caused this. But if no one at Microsoft’s listening, no one is investigating. And if you use OneDrive as a cloud backup, it’s actually a scary prospect of having access to your data at a critical time. (Therefore, sort out the other local backups as an alternative or actually another cloud service if you really wanted to push out the “Data Redundancy” boat).
Hopefully, the Redditor eventually gets to talk to a Microsoft Support Agent – an actual person – to iron this out. In theory, all this data could still be on Microsoft’s servers somewhere.
This incident has taken place at a time when Microsoft is pushing its account services on Windows 11 users as you cannot install us without one (yes, you can by using loopholes even if the company is busy eradicating some of these fudges). Not to mention pushing OneDrive, Microsoft 365 and other services with ads in Windows, of course.
The broad drive is an unfortunate background here when you are considering another recent mistaken error that has recently been brought out. It was the highlight of a potential problem with deleted Microsoft accounts (deleted by the user, that is,), which can result in loss of key to standard driven encryption used with new installations of Windows 11 24h2.
Again, the ugly little (albeit niche) scenario could cause all data on your drive to disappear in a black hole, never to be seen again. It is another strange situation that you can end up with without use at all in this case – and this, together with Redditor’s horrific situation, is prerequisites that Microsoft should clearly not inflict on consumers.
We have contacted Microsoft to comment on this specific case and will update this story if we get an answer from the company.
