Users complain en masse about OneDrive suddenly requiring NTFS formatted drives

OneDrive users complain on the internet that they are no longer able to use their OneDrive shares. Microsoft has made a change that requires OneDrive locations to be using the NTFS filesystem.

ADVERTISEMENT

"Your OneDrive folder can't be created in the location you selected", is displayed when users link OneDrive with a location that has a different filesystem than NTFS.

"The location you were trying to create OneDrive folder belongs to a drive with an unsupported file system. To have OneDrive use a different location, click "Set up OneDrive" and point OneDrive to a NTFS drive. To use the existing location with OneDrive, you need to format it with NTFS and then click "Set up OneDrive" to configure your account."

On the Microsoft support forums there are many complaints from angry users. They use the service with SD cards or external HDDs which are often formatted with the FAT32 file system. Also users who have a disk formatted with ReFS (that better protects against data loss) are no longer able to use OneDrive with that disk.

ADVERTISEMENT

Users are especially annoyed because Microsoft made the changes without any announcement, which means users didn't have time to take measures before Microsoft pulled the switch. Microsoft also hasn't explained why it has made the change.

Users affected by the issue can use a workaround, but that isn't without risk. Microsoft explains on its website here, how users can convert a FAT32 disk to NTFS. The method is a simple as issuing the command 'convert drive_letter: /fs:ntfs' on the command line. However, once a disk is converted, it's not possible to switch back to FAT32, Microsoft warns.

No posts to display