Onedrive better then Dropbox?

[LIVEFRMNYC]

I use Google Drive 200GB for annual payment of $30, and Cloud Sync on my Synology app syncs and backs up my Google Drive.

I use OneDrive 5GB for free, and got a free 15GB with it from Samsung. Works great for auto uploading pics taken on my smartphones. OneDrive is super quick with syncing/uploading, probably the quickest I've used.

I used to use Dropbox, can't remember why I don't use it anymore.

 

[Fomalhaut]

I use Google Drive 200GB for annual payment of $30, and Cloud Sync on my Synology app syncs and backs up my Google Drive.

I use OneDrive 5GB for free, and got a free 15GB with it from Samsung. Works great for auto uploading pics taken on my smartphones. OneDrive is super quick with syncing/uploading, probably the quickest I've used.

I used to use Dropbox, can't remember why I don't use it anymore.

Are you using OneDrive on a Mac? I’ve had poor performance with it. It seems a lot better on Windows

 

[LIVEFRMNYC]

Are you using OneDrive on a Mac? I’ve had poor performance with it. It seems a lot better on Windows

Yes, haven't noticed any issues on MacOS though. But I basically only use it for auto sync backup of my smartphone pics. Don't really use any other features.

 

[ian87w]

I use OneDrive as part of Microsoft 365 subscription. So far, it's been good. It's not perfect, but it's way better than it used to.

The reason I love OneDrive is the on-demand sync. This allows me to see all the files I have in the cloud without taking up local storage space. It's definitely a killer feature with the 1TB 365 subscription.

As for file syncing, I find Dropbox to be faster, at least on Windows for me. Any changes will be synced almost right away, while I often see my OneDrive applet took a few seconds (or longer) to realize there are any changes. OneDrive is getting better, but it still chokes sometimes, especially if I suddenly copied a lot of files to it. I used to have OneDrive on my Windows PC at home not syncing right away, ruining my work when I didn't have access to the files on my mobile. Oh and tth most annoying thing about OneDrive is that its filename specifications follow Windows. On a Mac, this can be annoying as macs have more flexibility, but some files ended up not syncing/giving errors because OneDrive just doesn't like the filename.

I stopped using Dropbox because they're increasingly less convenient. They put the device limit on free users, making it inconvenient to use in the age of multi-devices. And they're still using the old convention of having to manually select folders to sync if you want to save local space. This is no longer convenient for me.

Google Drive is in the middle. Google Drive has adopted a similar on-demand sync like OneDrive, although I feel the implementation somewhat clunkier. I haven't used GDrive much since I am subscribed to 365. Here's hoping Google Workspace will be faster/better as Google now has data center in my country. Microsoft doesn't.

 

[Fomalhaut]

I use OneDrive as part of Microsoft 365 subscription. So far, it's been good. It's not perfect, but it's way better than it used to.

The reason I love OneDrive is the on-demand sync. This allows me to see all the files I have in the cloud without taking up local storage space. It's definitely a killer feature with the 1TB 365 subscription.

As for file syncing, I find Dropbox to be faster, at least on Windows for me. Any changes will be synced almost right away, while I often see my OneDrive applet took a few seconds (or longer) to realize there are any changes. OneDrive is getting better, but it still chokes sometimes, especially if I suddenly copied a lot of files to it. I used to have OneDrive on my Windows PC at home not syncing right away, ruining my work when I didn't have access to the files on my mobile. Oh and tth most annoying thing about OneDrive is that its filename specifications follow Windows. On a Mac, this can be annoying as macs have more flexibility, but some files ended up not syncing/giving errors because OneDrive just doesn't like the filename.

I stopped using Dropbox because they're increasingly less convenient. They put the device limit on free users, making it inconvenient to use in the age of multi-devices. And they're still using the old convention of having to manually select folders to sync if you want to save local space. This is no longer convenient for me.

Google Drive is in the middle. Google Drive has adopted a similar on-demand sync like OneDrive, although I feel the implementation somewhat clunkier. I haven't used GDrive much since I am subscribed to 365. Here's hoping Google Workspace will be faster/better as Google now has data center in my country. Microsoft doesn't.

Both Dropbox and Google Drive have a similar on-demand sync to OneDrive. I think this only available on paid DropBox, but it's on all tiers of Google Drive AFAIK. It used to be a useful differentiator for OneDrive, but no longer.

If Dropbox went back to supporting 500GB or 1TB and were within $20 per year of the other services, I would probably go back to them, but I'd be paying about AU$185/year for 2TB ( I think this has come down in price since I last looked). This is compared to AU$125 for the same 2TB with Google Drive. Apple iCloud is similar to Dropbox with a jump from 200GB to 2TB (<grrr!>), but a little cheaper at $168/year. Of the major players, only Microsoft has a 1TB offering that is bundled into other useful products such as MS Office or MS Business accounts (which give you e-mail hosting). It's a pity that OneDrive just doesn't seem to cut it for my purposes, other than as online backup & archive.

 

[ghanwani]

If you have OneDrive for work then I think it has a limitation that you can only access one account at a time.

 

[Fomalhaut]

If you have OneDrive for work then I think it has a limitation that you can only access one account at a time.

I have 2 OneDrive accounts. It allows you to have multiple accounts, and have them both active at the same time (i.e. 2 different OneDrive sync processes:

You add the second account in the preferences panel with the "Add an Account" button

If you access via the browser, then I think you do have to select the other account, similar to Google with multiple accounts.

You also get 2 file locations in Finder:

 

[ghanwani]

I have 2 OneDrive accounts. It allows you to have multiple accounts, and have them both active at the same time (i.e. 2 different OneDrive sync processes:

View attachment 1951838

You add the second account in the preferences panel with the "Add an Account" button

If you access via the browser, then I think you do have to select the other account, similar to Google with multiple accounts.

You also get 2 file locations in Finder:
View attachment 1951842

Interesting. Is this a recent addition?

 

[Fomalhaut]

Interesting. Is this a recent addition?

Not that recent....I recall having it for at least half a year and maybe longer. I only discovered it because I was getting fed up with the slow sync of my main 1TB business account and wanted to try my 5GB personal account. At first, I thought it was a bug seeing two OneDrive icons in the status menu, but I can see that it can be useful.

[Update: I'e just got a new Mac and thought I would try it again with my business account, and even though it's set to "files on demand" so that it's not downloading any files, it has still been "syncing" for over an hour now. I presume it's trying to set up its meta-data for the links that are shown in the file system, but takes a long time. I might let it run to see how long it takes - I'm expecting days at least. ]

 

[Fomalhaut]

... and OneDrive "not syncing" any actual files on your computer, still takes almost 200% CPU.

Does anyone know exactly what it's doing when it's "syncing" files ("processing <xxxx> files") that remain on-line?

AFAIK Google Drive doesn't do this... or if it does, it's much faster....[update] I just tried it with my work Google Drive account. It took literally 2 seconds to start it up and say "synced".

OneDrive seems to be a terrible resource-hog on macOS

 

[Fomalhaut]

Here is another reason for not choosing OneDrive. I've just sync'd my business OneDrive on my new MBP14.

It was much faster than previous machines, but still took many hours to do....whatever it does when it doesn't even sync to files on the file system (it's all offline)

But looking at my memory usage this morning...

CPU ramped up to 150-200% for a lot of the time.

Nearly 9.5GB for the OneDrive process, even well after it had finished "syncing"...<sigh> :-(

This is just awful software on the Mac....

 

[Marshall73]

I use OneDrive personal and business. I have my data and connect to a sharepoint documents server. We enable files on demand so that the data is not held locally. I use it regularly with no issues, have done for about 5 years now. I used to use Dropbox before it too supported files on demand and it’s a decent product. I also use iCloud (I have 2TB and use ~600GB currently)

 

[mi7chy]

Here is another reason for not choosing OneDrive. I've just sync'd my business OneDrive on my new MBP14.

It was much faster than previous machines, but still took many hours to do....whatever it does when it doesn't even sync to files on the file system (it's all offline)

But looking at my memory usage this morning...
View attachment 1954669

CPU ramped up to 150-200% for a lot of the time.

Nearly 9.5GB for the OneDrive process, even well after it had finished "syncing"...<sigh> :-(

This is just awful software on the Mac....

That could just be MacOS memory leak. Here's mine using >16GB running nothing.

 

[Fomalhaut]

That could just be MacOS memory leak. Here's mine using >16GB running nothing.

Hmmm...that's a big WindowServer process!

I don't think my OneDrive issue is the same issue, at least not directly. If I kill the OneDrive process, I get all the memory back. Unless of course, OneDrive is is using an underlying macOS API that *does* have a memory leak. Without delving into a stack dump, it would be hard to tell.

 

[LeeW]

Nearly 9.5GB for the OneDrive process, even well after it had finished "syncing"...<sigh> :-(

That does seem odd. I use nowhere near that.

 

[Fomalhaut]

That does seem odd. I use nowhere near that.

View attachment 1954704

How many files & how much storage are you using?

I've found that OneDrive performance depends on the size and number of files that it has to process (even if not actually syncing to files on the local file system). I have 2 accounts - one with the default free limit of 5GB and a few thousand files, and another with 400-500GB and at least 150,000 files. The small account works OK, the large one does not.

I have a smaller numb of files (tens of thousands, maybe 120GB) on Google Drive, but it performs much better. Unfortunately, Google Drive does have any plans between 200GB and 2TB (same as DropBox and iCloud) and I get 1TB with OneDrive included with my Microsoft Business plan, so it is a good deal....for archiving but not for actual real-time use.

I really wish Dropbox, iCloud & Google would offer a 500GB or 1TB plan....but it seems they all want to push users to 2TB, which I bet allows them to sell the same storage at least twice based on the fact that a lot of people will buy this but not use it all.

 

[LeeW]

How many files & how much storage are you using?

Using a fair amount. In terms of the number of files upwards of 350k, not large files just a lot of mostly small ones, just a lot of them as I am storing one copy of all my coding work in OneDrive.

 

[Fomalhaut]

Using a fair amount. In terms of the number of files upwards of 350k, not large files just a lot of mostly small ones, just a lot of them as I am storing one copy of all my coding work in OneDrive.

View attachment 1954727

Hmm...that's not disimilar to my usage. I think I have approx 400,000 files (including lots of small code assets), photos etc. and about 300GB IIRC.

I've set up this account on at least 3-4 different machines (including a Windows PC) and had slow sync performance on all of them, so there is either something particularly demanding about the kinds of files I have, or my account is somehow damaged (but not repaired by new installations) or there are problems with OneDrive.

This is an account linked a Microsoft Business account BTW, so it's possible that these account are using different backend infrastructure, and you can see that it's based on SharePoint if you choose the "classic view" in the browser. You can see the URL is https://<my account name>-my.sharepoint.com

As I mentioned, the free (5GB) account works fine, and is about as quick as Google Drive.

 

[LeeW]

This is an account linked a Microsoft Business account BTW, so it's possible that these account are using different backend infrastructure

That's the only thing I can think of that would be different, I am using O365 family.

 

[nickdalzell1]

The only thing that bothers me about Google Drive is that like every service Google makes, it will inevitably be killed off/rebranded into something later on. Every Google app ends up this way making me very skeptical relying on any of them. I actually loved Google+ and it was so much better than Facebook. Sorry, Google, you ruined things too many times (Reader, Inbox, Google Play Music, Google+)

If I relied on cloud anything I'd place OneDrive on top, but I'm still of the old fashioned type who trusts a USB drive or local NAS/RAID over a cloud. Clouds die, they delete stuff if they assume you got pirated content on there (I remember a few years ago on another forum someone lost their entire MP3 collection from a stupid arbritrary copyright strike), and rely on perfect connection to the internet. I don't even stream music since I often find myself in areas with no signal or limited signal coverage and prefer my music not stop playing. But hey that's just me.

I still got my 365 sub, and I do use OneDrive, but mostly for wireless transfer between devices, since transferring over Bluetooth is horribly slow (if you're transferring GB+ files, I pity ya!) and I never could get WiFi Direct to work.

 

[sracer]

The only thing that bothers me about Google Drive is that like every service Google makes, it will inevitably be killed off/rebranded into something later on. Every Google app ends up this way making me very skeptical relying on any of them. I actually loved Google+ and it was so much better than Facebook. Sorry, Google, you ruined things too many times (Reader, Inbox, Google Play Music, Google+)

If I relied on cloud anything I'd place OneDrive on top, but I'm still of the old fashioned type who trusts a USB drive or local NAS/RAID over a cloud. Clouds die, they delete stuff if they assume you got pirated content on there (I remember a few years ago on another forum someone lost their entire MP3 collection from a stupid arbritrary copyright strike), and rely on perfect connection to the internet. I don't even stream music since I often find myself in areas with no signal or limited signal coverage and prefer my music not stop playing. But hey that's just me.

I still got my 365 sub, and I do use OneDrive, but mostly for wireless transfer between devices, since transferring over Bluetooth is horribly slow (if you're transferring GB+ files, I pity ya!) and I never could get WiFi Direct to work.

Google has made significant changes to the desktop client for their cloud storage over the past 8 years. Not only renaming it, but changing the way it functions. Each change required modifying workflows that relied on Google cloud storage.

So I stopped using it as an integral part of my workflows... but (as you do with OneDrive) mostly for wireless transfer between devices.

 

[nickdalzell1]

Google has made significant changes to the desktop client for their cloud storage over the past 8 years. Not only renaming it, but changing the way it functions. Each change required modifying workflows that relied on Google cloud storage.

So I stopped using it as an integral part of my workflows... but (as you do with OneDrive) mostly for wireless transfer between devices.

That's another thing. Google keeps changing and rearranging their apps so often that developing muscle memory is impossible if you rely on their apps. It took a week before I figured out where they moved the 'delete' action on Gmail. You used to select an email then a delete button came up. Now, you can still select but the whole 'Material You' no longer produces a menu (why does it still let you select?!) and the delete action now mirrors Apple where you swipe to delete (ensuring you don't swipe the wrong way and initiate a reply--who designs this crap?)

Microsoft ain't immune, after all, they made Windows 8, then 10 and now 11, and I lost a few game saves on my Xbox 360 when they rebranded 'SkyDrive' to 'OneDrive' (killing support for the 360 and any saves stored there so they can't be used for backward compatibility with the Xbox one) but Google is worse in this regard. They weekly rearrange their app actions to the point I'm convinced they do it just to annoy folks. I can't see any legitimate reason behind it other than them running out of ideas to improve so they just change for change's sake. It's a solution in search of a problem, much like relying entirely on the 'cloud'. I liked things better when the 'cloud' was just the icon for 'internet' on a network topology diagram.

 

[skaertus]

I use OneDrive because it comes with Microsoft 365. Dropbox would require me to pay more than I do for the whole Office 365 suite (including OneDrive) and comes only with cloud storage, which is the reason I no longer use it. That said, Dropbox is better in syncing files (I often have problems syncing with OneDrive).

 

[ghanwani]

I use OneDrive because it comes with Microsoft 365. Dropbox would require me to pay more than I do for the whole Office 365 suite (including OneDrive) and comes only with cloud storage, which is the reason I no longer use it. That said, Dropbox is better in syncing files (I often have problems syncing with OneDrive).

Indeed. I think Microsoft 365 is $70/year and comes with 1TB, while the lowest 2TB DropBox plan is $120.

 

[skaertus]

Indeed. I think Microsoft 365 is $70/year and comes with 1TB, while the lowest 2TB DropBox plan is $120.

Yes, kind of. As good as Dropbox may be, it is too expensive considering that Microsoft 365 offers cloud storage plus all Office apps for a little bit more than half of its price.