The changes Microsoft is making to OneDrive in the latest builds of Windows 10

Those who are active users of OneDrive and have installed build 9879 of Windows 10 have surely caught their attention some changes that are being made to the way this service works on Windows PCs.

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Several of these changes have caused some annoyance and stir among Microsoft users, but the company claims they are necessary because alongside them is implementing a new synchronization engine for OneDrive that will allow the service to offer better performance in multiple scenarios, and the ability to scale considering that many users will have unlimited cloud storage from now on."

Let's take a closer look at what these innovations are, and how they affect those of us who use OneDrive.

"Goodbye to smart files"

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OneDrive in Windows 8.1 offered us a very useful function called smart files or placeholders, thanks to which we could see in the Explorer Windows all the files stored in our OneDrive, although many of them were not downloaded locally (and therefore required a connection to open them). In the image below we see an example of how a smart file behaves in terms of space used."

The placeholder uses some space (40 KB) even though the entire file is not synchronized with the computer, that space is used among other things to store metadata that allow us to search OneDrive using Windows ExplorerThis search functionality surpasses that of the OneDrive web, since there you can only search for files according to their name, while thanks to smart-files we can search according to tags, author, date modified, and even search the content of the file in the case of PDFs or Office documents.

Smart-files allowed us to explore all OneDrive content from Windows Explorer, including files that were not downloaded locally

If smart-files were so good, why did Microsoft remove them? In Redmond they give several reasons, some more convincing than others. First of all, they point out that smart-files were confusing for many users, since they made some people think that these files were available offline when they were seen as just another file online the Explorer. Another reason is the existence of compatibility problems with certain applications such as Adobe Lightroom, which threw errors when trying to open smart-files that were not previously downloaded ( although in other programs, such as Office, there are no such errors).

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It seems to me that neither of those 2 arguments justify the removal of the feature, since such problems could have been solved with a visual indicator that differentiates the filesdownloaded of those that require connection. The icons of the latter could be translucent, or have an exclamation point, or vice versa, the files available locally could have a check mark icon, to give examples."

Having a collection of 50,000 photos on OneDrive, the space used by the smart-files of such photos would be approximately 2 GB "

Microsoft also invokes performance reasons, claiming that due to smart-files the speed and stability of synchronization was not so good as they wanted it to be (sync reliability was not where we needed it to be>"

Finally, the OneDrive team alleges that smart-files would soon start causing problems on Windows devices with little available space, as such files continue to use up some space, and as storage begins to be offered Unlimited in OneDrive it becomes feasible that these files leave the user with no available space to work on a small capacity tablet or PC (8 or 16 GB).

The underlying reason: OneDrive is updating its sync engine

"Although the reasons given by Microsoft for removing smart-files are unconvincing, it is true that the company is making changes to OneDrive that seem to require sacrifices> The new engine OneDrive promises greater reliability and speed, but smart-files have no place in it."

Redmond's idea is to implement a new synchronization engine for Windows that puts reliability, scalability and speed as priorities, along with allowing you to use OneDrive and OneDrive for Business from a single interface (as is the case with mobile apps). And as it seems, in this new engine there is no place for smart-files, which will be replaced by selective folder synchronization, which would be simpler and more convenient for the objectives that Microsoft wants to achieve.

But luckily things don't end there, because the OneDrive team continues to be concerned that important functionality has been lost with the transition to the new engine. That is why they affirm that they will continue working on bringing back to this new scheme features such as advanced search from Windows Explorer They affirm that soon we will be able to search from there even files that are out of sync, and that they will be accessible directly from the results page ( although those files will still not be visible from when browsing by folders).

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For the future, they announce that other key functions will be implemented>"

The new features we gained in Windows 10

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One positive news is that there are already improvements that we can enjoy in Windows 10, some of them thanks to the new OneDrive synchronization engine.The first of these is the ability to have faster upload speeds by activating the batch file upload option, which is now available in the settings panel. "

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Along with that, returns in glory and majesty the remote access feature that was lost in Windows 8.1. Thanks to it, we can access any file available on a Windows 10 PC that is turned on and has an internet connection via the web, even if it is not stored in OneDrive. To activate this function on a PC, 2-step authentication will be used."

Lastly, Windows 10 shows more information about the progress of OneDrive synchronization, and we are finally allowed to get links to share without having to go through the web, but directly from the desktop, via the browser's context menu.

What do you think of these changes? Do you think the move to this new synchronization engine will be for the better?

Via | Winsupersite, Dot Net Mafia