from Hacker News

SkyDrive in Windows 8.1: Cloud storage the way it’s meant to be

by boduh on 7/16/13, 8:20 AM with 51 comments

  • by RyanZAG on 7/16/13, 9:21 AM

    Wow, this is evil.

    The Documents library even uses the SkyDrive location as its default write location, so any file saved to the Documents library will automatically go on SkyDrive.

    Most office workers won't even notice this. Any time someone hits save in Word, their document is sent directly to the NSA for review. This is like the 'url bar goes to google' problem in Chrome, but 1000x worse.

  • by jasonkester on 7/16/13, 9:38 AM

    I don't think I like the part where it mocks up your UI to look like your files have synced, but they're not actually sitting on your drive.

    I've been burned enough times by "Delayed Write", where you stick a bunch of files on a USB drive, pull it out and hop in the car, while back on your machine it pops up a little box saying "Whoa! hold up! we didn't actually copy any of those files yet, even though we said we had." This seems like another version of that same idea, except this time designed to leave me without any of the music and video I'd "synced" onto my new road machine right before hopping that month-long riverboat down the Congo.

    Given a choice, I think I'd prefer that my machine actually did the things with my files that I've told it to do. Copy them when I copy them, sync them when I sync them. I hope there's an option to do that here.

  • by antninja on 7/16/13, 9:59 AM

    They will delete your account if you upload pornographic images. Since your data is private, the only possble reason for this policy is to make the job of spies more comfortable. The way it's meant to be.

  • by greyman on 7/16/13, 9:31 AM

    Cloud storage the way it’s meant to be? Without client-side encryption support? Hmm...

    BTW, can someone share the experience regarding the syncing speed? Lastly I had been evaluating both Dropbox and Skydrive, I found the DB to be quicker to upload modified files - the uploading started almost immediately, which was not the case with Skydrive.

  • by Nux on 7/16/13, 9:39 AM

    "Cloud storage the way it’s meant to be" - what a frickin joke! They should be ashamed of themselves to come up with such subjects after all that has happened!

  • by forkrulassail on 7/16/13, 8:35 AM

    Yes, go ahead, trust Microsoft again.

  • by cmircea on 7/16/13, 10:34 AM

    I think I'm going to write my own cloud storage app, to use Azure Storage or something, while encrypting everything on the client.

  • by twentyfourseven on 7/16/13, 11:49 AM

    Serious, snark-free question: is this a paid review by Microsoft? I've never been an Arstechnica reader but I thought they had more integrity than this.

    Talking up SkyDrive is like extolling the virtues of ivory from elephant tusks. In both cases there is a horrible hidden cost.

  • by yungchin on 7/16/13, 11:00 AM

    "The files themselves use the reparse point mechanism first introduced in Windows 2000. During that first sync, stub files ("reparse points") are created to mimic the directory structure stored on SkyDrive. Any operation on these files is intercepted automatically, allowing SkyDrive to download the file on-demand."

    Being a long-time luser, I hadn't heard of NTFS reparse points before. Somehow, every time I read something about NTFS features, it strikes me how well thought-out that FS is, especially for its time.

  • by josephers on 7/16/13, 11:08 AM

    I'm actually interested in this. I'm out of space on my Macbook Air, but I have gigabytes of photos that I'd like to be able to use with Aperture or Lightroom without using an external drive.

    Has anyone tried a solution to mount an online server/drive/storage as a network drive in order to do the same things that this new SkyDrive will do?

  • by Achshar on 7/16/13, 11:01 AM

    I just can't trust any big corp after the whole NSA thing. Never. Period. Unless they take some very drastic steps. This looks pretty slick, but I can never use this. I hope microsoft and others are reading this. All the recent flack has seriously damaged public image, at least in the power user world.

  • by hereonbusiness on 7/16/13, 11:57 AM

    I'm just thinking, maybe the NSA should start their own cloud storage service, cut out the middle man, you see.

    Think about it, free, no size or bandwidth restrictions, and if you use encryption they'll probably keep a backup for you, forever.

  • by LeeHunter on 7/16/13, 11:19 AM

    Cloud storage should, first of all, be OS agnostic, secondly it should be content agnostic (meaning the provider doesn't review the content for compliance to its policies). Skydrive fails on both counts.

  • by contingencies on 7/16/13, 9:49 AM

    RMS called this "Windows: PRISM Edition" @ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6045421

  • by dschiptsov on 7/16/13, 10:17 AM

    Paid content the way it meant to be.

    How Google Drive is less meant to be cloud storage?)