Onedrive is deleting all my files

Hugo Nilsson 0 Ryktespoäng
2026-05-16T10:26:37.9133333+00:00

Well, first and foremost, I dont get how Microsoft gets away with not having support when you pay for their product, I have an assignment due monday, and now onedrive scrambled half my harddrive, and deleted around 20gb from the cloud where i had most of it backuped and because it was full when it started, it doesnt let me restore the files.

I will start from the beginnig, I had my Documents folder backed up with onedrive, which doesnt allow me to choose the specific files i want to back up in Documents, it just syncs the whole documents folder. This was fine initially, but in my current project, i was creating some big datasets that reached around 45 GB, this was of course too much for onedrive to handle since i have 100 GB of storage there, so around half the dataset was automatically synced with onedrive and saved in the cloud and unfortunately ended up with about 101 GB in the cloud making onedrive stop working.

To fix this problem I told onedrive to stop "Known Folder Protection" for Documents with the intention of syncing what i need but not for example the big datasets... However after i clicked "keep everything on this PC" it of course had to think for a good while, but completely locked up during the transfer.

So now I have two sets of "Documents" on my pc, one in the onedrive directory and one in "users" neither is complete or close to complete. This was bad enough but mostly recoverable as I had most of the lost data on cloud onedrive still, but then onedrive starts to sync with my computer, which essentially means removing everything from the cloud... Fortunately, i noticed it, turned of syncing, and looked in the trash on onedrive, but as it was over the limit when it started deleting my files, it will not allow me to restore the files!

So yeah, that is about it, I have accepted that my dataset is deleted and i will have to create a new one but i really need a working file system again and quick to be able to hand in a finished project on monday

Microsoft 365 och Office | OneDrive | För hemanvändning | Windows
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  1. Kai-H 28,700 Ryktespoäng Externa Microsoft-medarbetare Moderator
    2026-05-27T10:06:13.55+00:00

    (Please note that this is Swedish Q&A Forum, any threads should be posted in Swedish. However, I will still provide an answer in English based on your initial response.)

    Hi, Hugo Nilsson

    What likely happened is that OneDrive “backup” changed your real Documents location to the OneDrive Documents folder, so stopping backup did not simply put everything back where it used to be. It can leave files split between C:\Users\yourname\OneDrive\Documents, C:\Users\yourname\Documents, the OneDrive web recycle bin, and possibly Windows Recycle Bin.

    Here are some suggestions you can try:

    First, stop OneDrive from making more changes. Right-select the OneDrive cloud icon, open Settings, then either pause syncing or use Account > Unlink this PC for now. Do not delete anything from either Documents folder until you have copied the files somewhere safe, because deleting synced files can also delete them online.

    Next, make a temporary folder outside OneDrive, for example C:\Recovery, or use an external drive. Copy everything useful from both locations into it:

    C:\Users\yourname\OneDrive\Documents

    C:\Users\yourname\Documents

    Also check Windows Recycle Bin and the OneDrive web Recycle Bin. Online-only deleted files may not appear in the PC Recycle Bin, so the web recycle bin matters here.

    If you have Microsoft 365, try Restore your OneDrive on the OneDrive website and choose a point before the mass deletion started. This is meant for cases where many files were deleted or overwritten, but it affects the whole OneDrive, so review the activity list carefully before restoring.

    After the assignment is safe, rebuild the file setup manually: keep large datasets outside OneDrive, then only copy the finished documents or small files into OneDrive. It is recommended that big project datasets are not kept inside Documents if Documents is being backed up by OneDrive.

    Thank you for your patience in reading, I hope this information has been helpful to you. 

    If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment."    

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