Common Technical Challenges While Migrating to OneDrive for Business

Migrating to OneDrive for Business from leading cloud services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, or legacy file systems is never going to be a challenging task, especially when went with a smart OneDrive migration tool. However, a migration could go still go wrong if a business or an organization doesn’t have the complete knowledge of the migration process and the possible risks and roadblocks involved.

Service-Provider-Specific Limitations from Microsoft

1. What is the maximum file size allowed by OneDrive for Business?

Any file that is larger than 250 GB can’t be transferred or migrated to OneDrive for Business. CloudFuze intelligently attempts to zip the file to reduce its size to check if it can transfer larger files. If a file is very large, then it can’t be uploaded to OneDrive. Besides, zero-size files are not migrated.

2. Are there any types of files that OneDrive for Business Doesn’t Support?

Microsoft has made several improvements to ODFB in recent months. OneDrive for Business doesn’t block any filetype unless the admin of an ODFB account exclusively blocks file extensions due to security or other reasons.

3. What are invalid file characters in OneDrive?

OneDrive doesn’t support certain characters in file and folder names.

Restricted characters in folder names: ” * : < > ? / \ |

Restricted characters in file names: ~ ” # % & * : < > ? / \ { | }.

In addition to the above characters, Microsoft doesn’t allow the following names to be used as file or folder names: .lock, CON, PRN, AUX, NUL, COM1 – COM9, LPT1 – LPT9, _vti_, ini, Any file that starts with $.

CloudFuze’s Office 365 migration tool replaces the invalid characters in a file or folder with a hyphen (-) to ensure quick and hassle-free migration.

4. What is the upper limit of the file name and file path characters in OneDrive?

The file path along with the file name shouldn’t cross 400 characters. If a file’s path length is more than 400 characters, CloudFuze changes the folder location of the file/files to make sure that all files are migrated despite the constraint.

The details of the moved files can be tracked and found easily in the migration reports.

5. Throttling

Most cloud service providers, including Microsoft, Google, Dropbox, Box, etc. throttle the upload/download speed when they detect too many files or too much data being transferred in a quick period. Cloud providers do this to protect their network and infrastructure from abuse. Speed throttling is usually temporary, often lasting a few minutes to a couple of hours. CloudFuze’s retry mechanism detects when speed limitations are lifted and re-initiates the migration.

Are you planning to migrate to OneDrive? Let CloudFuze help you switch to Office 365/OneDrive for Business quickly and securely on a budget while saving hundreds of manhours of your IT team. Contact us today.