What exactly is the proper procedure for backing up (imaging) a Windows PC when OneDrive is involved?

[DrMacintosh]

Hello all, I want to backup a laptop I have with an obscure program installed on it. Reinstalling said program requires a call to a database specialist which I want to avoid. Normally you could just to a system image to a network location/external drive, but because I use SharePoint and OneDrive, restoring from a system image will overwrite all the current cloud data with its brand new out of date data! So unless there is a way to exclude folders from a system image, the alternative is File History which will not backup installed Apps, and since files are in SharePoint/OneDrive this method does not help me either. 

 

On macOS, TimeMachine can fully restore user settings, apps, and data onto a clean system and you have the ability to add/exclude drives and folders from backups at will. I simply exclude my OneDrive folders from my Mac backups, but my Windows machine is running with no backups because I will lose data with the built in backup tools in Windows. 

 

This is a huge limitation of the Windows operating system that actively risks customer data. 

[Kilrah]

3 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

restoring from a system image will overwrite all the current cloud data with its brand new out of date data!

It should not, the file modification dates and databases should allow it to figure out the client is out of date.

But if you want to be extra sure, probably boot the restored machine without network conneciton, log out onedrive and clean it up, than give network back and log in again?

[manikyath]

if you restore from an image, including the onedrive settings and data, it should recognise the local version is out of date, and should either pull down the latest version or raise a sync conflict.

 

OneDrive is *very* aggrerssive on sync conflicts, every time it's not sure it'll either raise a prompt or just sync to a copy instead.

 

that said.. if you pull certain folders from an image and start overwriting them on an online system.. that's on you for doing things you shouldnt do.

[DrMacintosh]

7 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

It should not, the file modification dates and databases should allow it to figure out the client is out of date.

That is the intended function, but the data loss that I describe literally happened when I was first deploying M365 at my job. Was upgrading an old desktop and OneDrive had been offline for some reason for a long time, when it finally connected it thought its local files were current even though it was about a month out of date. I was thankfully able to recover the data in the Admin settings of the SharePoint Library, but it was not a fun experience. 

 

7 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

But if you want to be extra sure, probably boot the restored machine without network conneciton, log out onedrive and clean it up, than give network back and log in again?

I found this suggestion on various other forums, this is a workaround, not a real solution. But it might be what I am forced to do unfortunately because there isn't a better option. 

[DrMacintosh]

4 minutes ago, manikyath said:

OneDrive is *very* aggrerssive on sync conflicts, every time it's not sure it'll either raise a prompt or just sync to a copy instead.

In theory yes, but my first hand experience makes me not trust it. It would be best if the whole OneDrive directory was not included in any system backups. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

One solution to this would be to use a different drive/partition for one drive, and don't included that with the system image backup.

[manikyath]

2 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

In theory yes, but my first hand experience makes me not trust it. It would be best if the whole OneDrive directory was not included in any system backups. 

the problem is that that doesnt work for two reasons:

- if you restore without the folder, it is the exact same problem as restoring with an outdated folder.

- especially with "full system backups" you really dont want to tamper with the contents of the image at all for the sake of consistency. these images are made on quite a low level, so excluding folders may end up very weird if there happen to be symlinks involved.

[DrMacintosh]

16 minutes ago, manikyath said:

if you restore without the folder, it is the exact same problem as restoring with an outdated folder.

Not really. At least not on macOS. On a Mac, if you restored from Time Machine and did not include your OneDrive directories, OneDrive would see that there isn't a directory to use, would ask you to pick one, and then would pull data from the cloud and there isn't anything the user has to do. It just works. I understand the technical reasons why Windows can't do this, it's just totally infuriating that user apps and data are not as easy to backup and restore as on macOS. The ability to fully restore user apps and data without the need for monolithic 1:1 drive copies is beyond underrated. 

[Kilrah]

25 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

One solution to this would be to use a different drive/partition for one drive, and don't included that with the system image backup.

The thing is that onedrive integrates a bit too much with the system, to the point of having a mess of your user folder now being moved inside onedrive...

I find it way to messy and thus don't use it at all, problem solved