You may find yourself with a SpiderOak backup device that is no longer associated with a computer that is available. For example, you may still have a particular device in your account but the physical computer associated with it was disposed of long ago. Best practice is to delete a device that is no longer needed. This will make your account's journals less complicated and improve performance.
You might however need to retain the device, perhaps for compliance reasons or to retain the associated backed up data. In that case, you should update the device to our most recent version for ONE or Groups. It might seem counterintuitive that it is necessary to update a device that is no longer in service, but our Quality Assurance team has determined through testing that having any device in your account, including a no longer used archive device, is associated with file synchronization and performance problems.
To do that, sit down at any computer with ample free hard disk space, RAM, and processor power. Log in to the computer's operating system as a user that does not already have a SpiderOak ONE or Groups device associated with it. You could, for example, have first created a new operating system user for this purpose. Download and run the SpiderOak ONE or Groups installer, choosing to reinstall the old device in question. It will go through syndication as normal. Once syndication is done, it will notice that the files that are associated with that device are not to be found on the computer, and it will move SpiderOak's copies of them to that device's deleted items bin. Files here are never deleted automatically by SpiderOak.
Delete from the SpiderOak device those files and historical versions you no longer need. This is not strictly required but is best practice, as it will make your account's journals less complicated and improve performance. Also disable LAN-Sync on the device.
If you do not plan to use this device further, quit SpiderOak ONE or Groups. To recover hard disk space on the computer, you can have your operating system delete that OS user and then delete its user folder from the hard disk. That will bring your computer back to the state that it previously was in with no additional hard disk space being used, yet the SpiderOak device will now be up to date.
Should you subsequently need to access a file from this updated device, recall that they are now found in its deleted items bin. Also recall that the deleted items bin is only accessible via the desktop application, not via the web interface nor the mobile app.
If all of this seems complicated, do keep in mind that best practice is to delete a device that is no longer needed, which is easier.
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