SYNC SPEED IMPROVEMENT - Desktop Sync Speed Makes Syncing Impractical
There have been several posts here before marked as "Boom It's Done" or referred to support. HOWEVER -- this is not a support issue, and I suggest you treat it as a serious problem with the product.
I have 1.45Mbps download speed (tested on speedtest.net) and it has taken more than a week to sync 2.4GiB of my files. According to a download speed calculator, this should take only ~ 4 hours. I have set my computer not to sleep to make sure the synchronization happens.
Please see some of the older posts that have been closed -- this is a major problem because it really makes it impractical to use OneDrive the way it should / could be used if it is that slow.
Do Business subscribers have that problem? I doubt it. Please look into this. I suspect that Microsoft bit off more than it could chew -- it was a bold move to promise 1TB of online storage with every Office 365 account -- it's what got me to subscribe. Now it's time to deliver on that promise.
Thanks.

We are always working on improving performance but we are really excited to share that we just turned on a major performance improvement in sync upload. The upload improvements apply to sync if you are running OneDrive on Windows 10, Windows 7, or Mac.
87 comments
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Russ commented
A completely useless service to use. Slow beyond slow, I have 500 speed and it crawls along. I have given up on it as it is glitchy, slow, and the camera uploads from a new Samsung cannot be completed.
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Fredd commented
I'm resurrecting this thread, it's almost the end of 2018 and OneDrive is still slow. So I think it still needs a huge BOOM! BOOM! to get this working right. Why can BOX and Dropbox do it correctly when Microsoft can't? I sincerely hope for OneDrive to properly work.
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Anthony Paterson commented
Wrong, Angus. It is still ridiculously slow. I am sitting here watching 14Gb upload (which did not need to be uploaded, your latest update decided to re-upload 14Gb of data that was already in the cloud), it has taken 3 days to upload 1.1Gb while being left on 24/7. It is really terrible service. And this problem has existed since I got onedrive with the launch of windows 8. You are ******* users off. Boom I'm gone.
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Marius commented
Having the same issues with download speeds. Seems to be an issue when syncing a large number of smaller sized files, versus larger sized files.
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Jon West commented
This issue was related to the download speed, not upload.
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Marsel Halder commented
This is pathetic!
I have 12 MBPS download speed and it is taking 2 weeks to sync my 15GB cloud data!
not only the syc is slow, because when it is running at the background it is slowing down the total internet connection.
I have 205 GB storage in ondrive and i cant use it! Dropbox and google drive did that 15 gb sync in 1/2 days!
Please fix it as people have been complaining about this for years...
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Anonymous commented
Well, I've just ticked over a week of virtually non-stop syncing and it has so far synced 1.2G of 128.2 G. Useless! So disappointed with OneDrive.
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Gayze commented
Four hours in, and only 633 mb uploaded to OneDrive. According to a bandwidth test, I should be uploading at 186kbps. I know that's not great, but this is pretty much prehistoric. I stopped by to see if there was a solution to the problem that I was missing, but see that people have been complaining about this for years, and nothing has been done. The so-called improvement mentioned in July 2015 was obviously lip service, as there are still a lot of complaints. Surely, with all the technology and money behind Microsoft, they could give us better than dial-up sync speeds.
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pan054 commented
I read some entries advising to go to Google Drive. Probably by people who haven't used GDrive lately
To insert some data in the discussion: it took almost 14 hours to upload a 0.56 GB file to GDrive, around 0.01 MB/s (after setting it to unlimited speed).Currently OneDrive is downloading around 0.1 MB/sec on the same computer and network, so an estimated download time of 1.5 hrs for the same file. Not great either, but 10 times faster than GDrive.
Cheers -
Fernando Serna commented
We just bought an iMac 27" and have a home wireless network with 50-60 MB/s download and 6-7 MB/s upload speeds. I use OneDrive - primarily because the subscription comes with MS Office - to back up our family's 600 GB of desktop data (65K+ files, most of which are pics of our children). This was necessary after a catastrophic failure resulted in the death of our previous top-of-the-line HP AIO desktop (running Windows 7... loved that machine for the 3 years we had it). Thankfully, we had an external hard drive back-up, but long story short, our Windows 10 replacement wouldn't play nice with it (or anything, now that I think about it). Hence, we went iMac. It took us almost 2 days to download the backup files to our machine with the OneDrive app. Not too shabby, particularly since I did it all over wi-fi (thank God for wi-fi extenders to reach that corner of the home office). However, the downloads maxed out at around 8 MB/s as reported by the app real-time. It also crippled our home wi-fi as anything else running on the network (iPhones, iPads, streaming Netflix, etc.) would cause the app to go to 0 MB/s and shut down the feed. It was frustrating to not be able to use our wi-fi concurrently, but it's done. Now time to Time Machine it all as a double back-up. We're not taking any chances. Good luck everyone.
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Peter commented
I have been loading 9.2GB for the last three days and it is not finished yet. I have my settings at no limit but still only get 90kb/s.
Onedrive is in Park as far as I am concerned. Going to go to Google.
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Allan commented
I am running Windows 10 and my Sync is only going about 300 KB/s to 600 KB/s. I have about 750 GB of data so I should be able to get everything synced up in, oh an Entire Month. This isn't acceptable speed.
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Anonymous commented
The same really slow speed syncing problem here too. I am around 100 KBps. On top of that my network seems to be completely overloaded while this slow syncing takes place. So I'm two times frustrated. I just started using OneDrive as a dropbox replacement. But it looks like it is not a good enought service although the price is cheap.
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Anonymous commented
I am experiencing the same issues as all of the other commenters. Microsoft are you going to address this issue or should we all take our business elsewhere?
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Anonymous commented
I am also experiencing upload speeds of 300Kb/sec. This is far too slow !!! 1GB takes 50 minutes. I have a decent 50Mb/sec ****** Media connection, and so i know that this is not the issue - it is the Microsoft servers that are limiting the speeds. Useless!! Do something, Microsoft !!!
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Stefan commented
This upload speed is really an issue. I have a 100 Mb/s fiber Connection and it takes forever to upload, as well as the browser is crashing after a while.
Why do you not have a regular fTP Connection to use? Is it because of restrictions in the service, or what is the deal. IMO, at the moment OneDrive is more or less useless and I will demand my money back due to an inferior product.
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Peter commented
I have a reported and tested upload speed of 15 Mbps, and it's taken me about three weeks to upload well under than 50GB of data. OneDrive is far and away the slowest cloud storage system I've ever used, so slow that it's essentially unusable for its stated purpose. In the UK, it would certainly be classed as 'not of merchantable quality'.
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Pav commented
Business user.
OneDrive for business is useless. Microsoft is trying to sell the product which is not working, and shamelessly charging people for unusable product.
After you buy services fro Microsoft you have spend many hours trying to fix what you have bought.
Can you imagine if you buying a brand new car or microwave and before you can use it you have to spend days in search for information on how to make it work, would that be acceptable? -
Steve Fossey commented
syncing is so slow, even on paid account. I have been browsing these support forums for a few days on and off, and I have yet to see a single "BOOM! IT'S DONE" that was anything better than spin.