Following My Own OneDrive Advice (Premium)

I wasn't expecting to follow up on my OneDrive adventures so quickly, but after seeing the issue I raised escalate over the weekend, I had to act. And in the spirit of trying to be more positive when possible, another topic I wasn't expecting to follow up on so quickly, it went better than I expected.

In How To Fix OneDrive’s Bad Behavior in Windows 11 (Premium), I outlined how the problems with OneDrive integration have escalated since the initial version of Windows 11, and how to fix each. But some of the issues are new to Windows 11 version 23H2, which isn't finalized yet, suggesting that maybe---hopefully--at least one of them is just a bug. Unfortunately, I've moved most of my PCs over to 23H2 (via the Release Preview channel) because I need to document it for the Windows 11 Field Guide. And I have now experienced the behavior that triggered that previous OneDrive article---it is forcing OneDrive Folder Backup on me after I explicitly opt out of it---on three different PCs. So I had to do something.

Otherwise, I might have waited a while longer.

As I wrote in that previous article, I have been using OneDrive's default top-level folder organizational scheme---with Apps, Desktop, Documents, Music, Pictures, and Videos folders in the root---since it was a thing. And it's worked well, for the most part: I use the Documents and Pictures folders extensively, and these are of course my most important data stores, but I also use all of the other folders. The issue is that Windows can auto-enable Folder Backup, a OneDrive feature I do not want to use, in certain situations. In doing so, local folders of files that should not be synced to the cloud are synced, and not just to the cloud, but to my other PCs. Where they intermingle with the personal data that I care about.

I do not want this. And in testing Google Drive integration with Windows, which is surprisingly good by the way, it occurred to me that I could work around this problem. Not fix it per se, given that a real fix would include Microsoft turning off the many suggestions throughout Windows that advertise this feature and actually respecting the choices I make. But work around it. And the workaround is simple enough: Just don't use any of those OneDrive folders.

This is scary.

And as I finished up that article late Friday afternoon, right around the time my wife starts coming around to see when we might be leaving for dinner unless I've already started getting ready, it occurred that maybe waiting on this change was prudent. After all, I just went through an incredible digital decluttering process that involved, among other things, the reorganization and decluttering of my massive documents archive, which was and still is hosted in OneDrive. (I also backed up it to Google Drive, my NAS, and OneDrive for Business.) And I had some hairy moments with OneDrive due to File Explorer performance issues especially. One does not muck about in file systems this important w...