The Gamers Arms

Another moan about the weather. The air is literally water here today, the wind has turned the rain into a fine mist that just soaks everything. It's like a winter's day out there

Podcasts where the hosts have a 5, 10 or even 20 minute preamble of inane small talk about something their pet did, or what their favourite cereal is. Just get on with the damn topic at hand!

So I did a full Windows reinstall today, having had a persistent problem with BSODs since I put my largely new PC together a few months back. I'd transferred my old M.2 boot drive to the new machine (where it and the GPU were the only remaining components), and I think the issue was with old motherboard drivers. In retrospect I obviously should have started from a fresh install, but the amount of crap I have to back up, some of which can't easily be reinstated just by copying the files back, made it unpalatable at the time. Long story short, I ended up upgrading to Windows 11 in an attempt to fix the BSODs, which definitely helped but didn't fully fix it. Today I had the time to wipe the boot drive and start with a fresh copy of Windows.

All of that went smoothly. I backed up everything onto my secondary drive, and then moved it back onto the boot drive once the new install was ready. Fine. I keep getting notifications about OneDrive running out of space, so figured backing up stuff to OneDrive must be a new Windows 11 default setting (or I'd mis-clicked something while reinstalling, but I don't think I did). True enough, I find a portion of my photo directory in there (which is vastly larger than the free space the service offers), so I go into the OneDrive settings and turn the backup off. This deletes all of my original files.

Let me repeat that. THIS DELETES ALL OF MY ORIGINAL FILES.

Not the copies stored in OneDrive, the originals. From my hard drive. They're not in my recycle bin. 20 years of digital photos, from my secondary school leaving day in 2002, all the way through university, to the most recent photos I've taken this week of a model I'm building. I immediately panic, as I don't have copies of these anywhere else, and while it's not going to be life-ending if I lose them, I would have been absolutely gutted. I scrabble around as I vaguely remember noticing a prompt that said that OneDrive has its own recycle bin, so I log in through the web interface, hit restore all, and mercifully everything appears back in the OneDrive folder (not the Windows' Photos folder I hasten to add). I immediately copy them to a second location on my other hard drive. I don't think I've lost anything.

I just absolutely cannot fathom how this happened. I triple-checked, and they had definitely disappeared from the local folder. I genuinely feel like I'm missing something, as I only have 5gb of storage on OneDrive and my Photos folder is 58gb, so it can't possibly have been stored in the cloud. I've never used OneDrive before so I don't know if, like Dropbox, everything is stored locally as well as on a server somewhere, but I don't have an explanation as to why my originals disappeared when I never deleted a thing from that folder. I didn't even delete them from the OneDrive folder, I simply switched off the backup function.

And the ironic thing? I was actually considering paying for OneDrive, as a minor worry about Windows' reinstall function wiping my secondary drive instead of just the boot drive made me think that I probably ought to get an actual backup solution sorted. I'd almost forgotten just how absolutely fucking moronic Microsoft are as a software company.

I have a special loathing for OneDrive. I’m forced to use it at work and it is solely responsible (after literal days of investigation on my part) for causing issues with multiple SSDs across multiple work laptops. There is a bug in OneDrive which can cause a file to lock if it is used and updated repeatedly while being automatically backed up - in my case it’s typically SSRS reports in development where the .data file is updated each time the report is run. The only way to unlock the file is to do a checkdisk and reboot, which can be a lengthy and inconvenient thing to do at work. The problem inevitably gets worse over time too, causing boot problems.

Uninstall OneDrive and hire a priest to sanctify your PC.

OneDrive is utter shit, I have to use it in conjunction with Teams at work. Trying to move any files is an exercise in utter futility- it always fucks it up.

Is OneDrive really a viable option for backups? Seems like no if it’ll delete things off your drive in the case where the server says the files aren’t there!

I’d really recommend Backblaze, I’ve been with them for years now. It runs in the background copying all your stuff to their service and has versioning so you can recover an early draft you’ve since overwritten.

Youtube, please. What in the ever living fuck is this ad?



Why are you watching Andrew Tate videos Dave hmmm? I believe it was some Dubai based video or something I randomly clicked. Not guilty!

It's so obviously a deepfake (or it might be just re-voiced, I mercifully don't know what Musk sounds like), do people really fall for that?

Kath woke up not feeling very well today as she so often rises with weakness in her right side and it can take a good while to subside, so there I am preparing her some dinner when someone knocks at the door, or should that be hammers the door. I go and answer and am met with a gas man wanting to do the readings - I let him know promptly it is not a good time my wife is ill listed as disabled and I am taking care of her needs right now. Could we book a different day.

Well you're going to receive a nasty letter if you don't let me do it today he replies

I'm sorry, I just explained my circumstances and it just wasn't a good time you can't force me to let you in. Send a nasty fucking letter - send ten of them, I don't give a flying fuck I have priorities of my own right now. Edwin.

- Addition: I was just taken a back by how standoffish this guy was, as if his very job depending on doing my reading and he just was not at all responsive to anything I was saying even though it was a perfectly reasonable request to do it another time.

Can he not just do it from outside? Anytime I know someone's read the meter is when I see them walking back to the van with a quick wave over their shoulder.

Depends where your meter is, innit.

Ours are outside, but I've seen gas ones under the stairs at relatives' places.

Ours is under the stairs.

Dave - fuck him tbh. Who the fuck does he think he is? And if you get a nasty letter, they can fuck off too.

Its a bizarre attitude to have. Customer says they aren't available at the moment, you just say fair enough, make a note of it and move into the next house. Maybe advise them that they'll probably get a letter looking to reschedule. Thanks and have a nice day.

I'm willing to bet he's rated on how successful his visits are, because all corporate entities are arseholes towards people of that level. That or he's just an arsehole.