Enable differential sync (only sync parts of the files that changed)
Today OneDrive implements differential sync only for Office files (that is, syncing only the changes made to the file, instead of the entire file). It would be a significant improvement for this capability to work against any files in OneDrive - so smaller changes to a file would result in less data needing to be transmitted, meaning less time to sync changes back and forth, and more efficient use of network bandwidth.
PJD
shared this idea
We have completed the rollout for both personal and business users. Enjoy the better syncing!
219 comments
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Hany Sabir
commented
Hi, do we have to enable the feature of is it enabled by default? Thanks
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dsghi
commented
There is an official announcement on this page, with a number of additional features: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2019/05/21/sharepoint-home-sites-microsoft-365-innovations-intelligent-workplace/
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dsghi
commented
Lol Randal, what a rediculous comment. So the reason differential sync is such a difficult problem is due to the various layers of encryption that are used to protect our files which are stored in OneDrive. Great news though, this should be marked as in progress, there was just a demonstration of this last week at SharePoint conference. It will be released by the end of the year.
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Randal Junior commented
I think I found a explanation. They didn't allow differential sync to discourage the sync of large files. So they can offer a bigger storage, with less actual server storage. It's like a flight overbooking, they share the empty space across more users.
The fewer big files that are less accessed, cause of the bandwidth requirements, are kept in cheaper and slower storage. They win on both sides. -
Carl
commented
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Carl
commented
How long does it take to get suggestions put into reality, are MS still thinking about it since July 2018? Its so frustrating to get no feedback. Would be interested to know how many developers are actually on the OneDrive dev team as clearly things aren't happening quickly enough.
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Caleb
commented
any updates in the last year?
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Anonymous
commented
This is a must. Have 3 votes.
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Dan
commented
A feature supported by all the "other options" for years...
A feature that can have a HUGE impact on the sync performance (only the CORE function of the application_...
Nearly 5 years since being requested...
Nearly 1 year since last update that actually said "Stay Tuned"...
The #1 voted feature request by thousands of votes....
Given the above, surely, you can at least give regular updates?What-ever the answer is, it would be better than silence...
even...
"we tried, we failed, our infrastructure blah blah blah, excuse excuse"
"we don't care"
"other things are still more important"
"try Dropbox - it already does this for years"
Just say something!
Kill off the false hopes or give real hope. -
Rafael Maciel
commented
I'll probably die soon and not be able to see this feature rolled out!
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Georg Jiří Überall commented
my god, I just added some tags to a huge video file and the whole thing uploaded again! This is just crazy
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Anonymous
commented
Has this feature been enabled now? It sure seems to be. A 115MB file that I change constantly now (for the past month or so) only takes a few seconds to upload when it has always taken a few minutes before (and completely saturated my bandwidth if I didn't have it throttled).
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Anonymous
commented
dropbox uses binary diff, works on any files, just do the same
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Rosalie Muir
commented
Why has the upload not working now from recording from Recording Pro no longer uploads to OneDrive ?
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Anonymous
commented
any news`?
if you cannot do this just buy dropbox? -
David S. commented
This is especially important for tags on MP3 and MP4 files. I recently edited the title tag of one of my 1.5GB MP4 files and the entire file had to re-upload. Not fun on my slow "Basic Starter" cable internet connection.
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Francis Ollivier
commented
That would be nice to have an updated status on this feature which should be a no-brainer nowadays. Seems like Onedrive hasn't discovered the wheel yet while other cloud-based services have been using it for years.
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Anonymous
commented
I would like to point out that Code42's CrashPlan does this -- It uses block-level (not just file level) incremental backup.
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Anonymous
commented
Regardless of MS' willingness to meet their users' needs, there must be a financial incentive in saved bandwith and storage of multiple versions of large documents. Not to mention the environmental considerations of spent resources, moving and storing unnecessarily large amounts of data...
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Alex B
commented
dropbox and many other services have this feature for years, I'm quite disappointed just finding out now that it can't be done. I was selling the idea of using sharepoint and sync files with onedrive as a replacement for a fileserver but syncing big files back and forth as a while just because you changed one single letter.
