I'm part of a small team of architects, and we've been using Office 365 with SharePoint and OneDrive for our file storage for the last two years. Recently, we encountered a major issue where some of our files seemed to lose synchronization after a Microsoft outage. Our IT guy was able to recover some files, but many are still lost, including numerous AutoCAD drawings and office documents. I can see some of the missing files listed as 'Recent' in OneDrive, but they give a '404 FILE NOT FOUND' error when I attempt to access them.
I have a few questions:
1) Has anyone experienced something similar and successfully recovered files?
2) Should we trust Office 365 for storing all our work data?
3) As far as I know, we don't have any backup in place. How do we create backups in SharePoint? Would it be better to bring back our NAS for a more secure network, and is it reasonable to save work there while still enabling collaboration with our team?
Please explain your thoughts in simple terms, as I'm not an IT professional! Thanks in advance!
1 Answer
From what I've gathered, using CAD files on SharePoint can lead to issues due to how the files are accessed and locked. It sounds like you might have encountered some of these problems, especially if multiple users are editing the same file. My experience suggests keeping CAD files on a dedicated NAS rather than in SharePoint to simplify management. As for backups, SharePoint doesn't provide true backup capabilities. You could use the "restore library" feature for minor issues, but if there's a significant loss, it may be tough to recover what’s gone past 30 days. It’s also wise to explore NAS options that can back up to Microsoft 365. That's the way we keep our files safe and accessible!
Thanks for the insight! We did notice that if one of us opened a .dwg file, it would create a new version each time someone else tried to access it, which complicated things. We lost a lot more than just CAD files, which is worrying.