Windows 11 user has 30 years of 'irreplaceable photos and work' locked away in OneDrive - and Microsoft's silence is deafening

• A Redditor was moving a huge slab of data from old drives to a new one
• They used OneDrive as a midpoint in an ill-thought-out strategy that left all the 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 address this issue

A cautionary tale shared on Reddit tells the story of a Windows PC owner who used OneDrive to store 30 years' worth of their data and lost the lot when their Microsoft account was locked, with no apparent way to regain access.

This is a nasty sounding predicament (highlighted by Neowin) to say the least, with the loss of what's described as three decades of "irreplaceable photos and work" which was transferred to OneDrive as a temporary storage facility.

The idea the Redditor had was that they needed to move that huge collection of files from multiple old drives where they were stored to a large new drive, and OneDrive was selected as the midpoint in that data migration journey.

So, they moved all the files off the old drives onto Microsoft's cloud storage service and prepared to transfer the data to the new drive, when they ran into a huge stumbling block. The Redditor was suddenly locked out of their Microsoft account (and therefore OneDrive, and all Microsoft services).

Now, this isn't a sensible way to manage this data transfer, of course (and I'll come back to outline why in a moment, in case you're not sure), but the point here is that the mistake happened, and the Redditor can't get any joy whatsoever from Microsoft in terms of trying to resolve the problem.

In their Reddit post, which is gaining a lot of attention, they say: "Microsoft suspended my account without warning, reason, or any legitimate recourse. I've submitted the compliance form 18 times - eighteen - and each time I get an automated response that leads nowhere. No human contact. No actual help. Just canned emails and radio silence."

They continue: "This feels not only unethical but potentially illegal, especially in light of consumer protection laws. You can't just hold someone's entire digital life hostage with no due process, no warning, and no accountability," adding that Microsoft is a "Kafkaesque black hole of corporate negligence."

Analysis: Microsoft needs to do better

Okay, so first up, very quickly - because I don't want to labor on the mistakes made by the unfortunate Redditor - this is not a good way to proceed with a drive migration.

In transferring a large slab of data like this, you should never have a single point of failure in the process. By which I mean shoving all the data into the cloud, on OneDrive, and having that as the sole copy. That's obviously the crux of the problem here, because once the user was locked out of OneDrive, they no longer had access to their data at all.

When performing such an operation, or as a general rule for any data, you should always keep multiple copies. Typically, that would be the original data on your device, a backup on a separate external drive at home (preferably two drives, in fact), and an off-site copy in a cloud storage locker like OneDrive. The point is that if you lose the original data, you can resort to, say, the external drive, but if that's also gone to the great tech graveyard in the sky somehow, you can go to the second drive (or the cloud).

Anyway, you get the point, but the Redditor chanced this way of doing things - figuring, no doubt, that as a temporary measure, it was fine to rely solely on OneDrive - but clearly, that wasn't the case.

There are a number of issues with the scenario presented here where Microsoft has fallen short of the standards that a customer would rightly expect.

Why did this happen?

First, there's the fact that the Microsoft account was simply locked with no notification or message provided as to why. The OneDrive user can only guess at why this ban was enacted (and the obvious guess is that some copyrighted material, or other content that contravened Microsoft's policies, was flagged in the uploaded files, which would trigger the account to be automatically locked). It's worth making it clear that we (obviously) don't have any idea about the contents of this data.

Secondly, with this having happened, the most worrying part here is the Redditor's description of how they feel like they're banging their head against a brick wall in trying to talk to Microsoft's support staff about how to resolve this. After all, this is essentially their whole life's worth of data, and there should be some way to at least find out what the problem is - and give the person who's been locked out a chance to explain, and potentially regain access.

For all we know, it could be a bug that's caused this. But if nobody at Microsoft's listening, nobody's investigating, probably. And if you do use OneDrive as a cloud backup, not having access to your data at a critical time is a frightening prospect indeed. (Which is why you must sort out those other local backups as an alternative, or indeed, another cloud service if you really wanted to push the 'data redundancy' boat out).

Hopefully, the Redditor will eventually get to speak to a Microsoft support agent - an actual person - to iron this out. In theory, all that data could still be on Microsoft's servers somewhere.

This incident has occurred at a time when Microsoft is pushing its account services on Windows 11 users, as you can't install the OS without one (well, you can by using loopholes, although the company is busy eradicating some of those fudges). Not to mention pushing OneDrive, Microsoft 365, and other services with ads in Windows, of course.

That broad drive is an unfortunate backdrop here when you consider another recent misstep recently brought to light. That was the highlighting of a potential problem with deleted Microsoft accounts (deleted by the user, that is), which could result in the loss of the key for the default drive encryption applied with new installations of Windows 11 24H2.

Again, that nasty little (albeit niche) scenario could lead to all the data on your drive disappearing into a blackhole, never to be seen again. It's another odd situation you could end up in with no recourse at all in this case - and this, along with the Redditor's awful plight, are predicaments that Microsoft clearly should not be inflicting on consumers.

We've contacted Microsoft for comment about this specific case, and will update this story if we get a response from the company.

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