How to fix errors after restoring files and now I have a size discrepancy and am afraid I've lost files I can't identify

Question

Hi,

I see plenty of posts about why OneDrive may be larger online than locally, but in my case it’s the other way around. My online file is smaller. (It says 209.3 GB on my computer; 205.1 online). Does anyone know why this could be?

Related to that - I still don’t understand how the sizes are so similar, given that I don’t have many things saved locally?

Not to drip feed, but this is on the heels of me doing a colossal screw up:

So basically I

1. Imported a lot of new photos
2. Realised I didn’t include metadata 
3. Deleted them.
4. Tried again
5. App that I was importing from (Photos App on Mac) couldn’t cope and crashed out.
6. Decided to delete what I’d done.
7. Photos wouldn’t delete and kept syncing.

8.Followed online suggestion unlinking onedrive

9. Linked back
10. Seemed to create a duplicate folder. This happened to me before, in the past I deleted the duplicate and it was ok.
11. I deleted duplicate this time but it wasn’t duplicate, all my photos essential documents gone.
12. Panicked.
13. Thankfully restored (I think) from a hard drive backup
14. Here we are with the discrepancy which is, again 209.3 GB on my computer; 205.1 online. (And my backup before this happened put it at 210.9)

Why the discrepancy? And how can I trust myself - to do anything tech related again?

Answer 1

Thanks for sharing the details, Rose! What you’re describing happens a lot with OneDrive after unlinking, relinking, and restoring.

When OneDrive resyncs after being unlinked/relinked, it often keeps:

• Temporary sync cache files

“.tmp” or “.lnk” (shortcut) files

Partially synced versions

These are stored locally but not uploaded, so they count toward your local 209 GB, but not the cloud 205 GB.

How to check that, try this:

Open File Explorer then View then Show then “Hidden items”.

Then look for a folder named:

OneDrive/.tmp

OneDrive/.onedrive

or any folders with names ending in “_1” or “(1)”.

If those folders don't contain files important to you, you can safely delete them.

See if this helps. If you need further assistance just let me know.

Best regards,

Kimberly

Answer 2

Got it. So you're on Mac.

On Mac, there are caches that are not visible but can easily account for the few GB. Here's how to check:

Open Terminal and run:

du -sh ~/Library/Caches/com.microsoft.OneDrive

du -sh ~/Library/Application\ Support/OneDrive

du -sh ~/Library/CloudStorage/OneDrive

If you see a few gigabytes there, that’s your “missing” 4 GB.

To delete those:

Quit OneDrive then run

rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/com.microsoft.OneDrive/*

Then reopen OneDrive. It will rebuild caches automatically. This won’t delete any of your actual files.

Answer 3

Try this please:

df -h shows total disk usage including filesystem overhead.

du -sh shows actual file data. If df > du by about 4 GB, there’s your answer. It’s not “lost” files; it’s just disk bookkeeping.

Answer 4

Hi,

Thank you for your help. I'm df -h shows 926GB. And if i'm reading it correctly, du -sh tells me its 840GB, which is very different from the figures we're talking about? So I'm not sure about the next step.

Thank you for your help!