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Microsoft downgrades free OneDrive storage to 5GB, ends unlimited storage for Office 365 customers
Microsoft has announced radical changes to its OneDrive cloud storage service, ending unlimited storage for Office 365 users. Free storage is also being decreased from 15GB to 5GB for all users. The reason for the scaling back of storage comes after Microsoft found that a few customers were using up to 75TB of cloud storage from a single account:
Since we started to roll out unlimited cloud storage to Office 365 consumer subscribers, a small number of users backed up numerous PCs and stored entire movie collections and DVR recordings. In some instances, this exceeded 75 TB per user or 14,000 times the average.
These are the changes prescribed by Microsoft:
We're no longer planning to offer unlimited storage to Office 365 Home, Personal, or University subscribers. Starting now, those subscriptions will include 1 TB of OneDrive storage.
100 GB and 200 GB paid plans are going away as an option for new users and will be replaced with a 50 GB plan for $1.99 per month in early 2016.
Free OneDrive storage will decrease from 15 GB to 5 GB for all users, current and new. The 15 GB camera roll storage bonus will also be discontinued. These changes will start rolling out in early 2016.
The Redmond giant has mentioned that customers that exceed the new quotas will have access to their files for at least 12 months, following which it will scale back the storage:
If you are an Office 365 consumer subscriber and have stored in excess of 1 TB, you will be notified of this change and will be able to keep your increased storage for at least 12 months.
If you are an Office 365 consumer subscriber and find that Office 365 no longer meets your needs, a pro-rated refund will be given. To learn more visit the FAQ.
If you are using more than 5 GB of free storage, you will continue to have access to all files for at least 12 months after these changes go into effect in early 2016. In addition, you can redeem a free one-year Office 365 - Personal subscription (credit card required), which includes 1 TB of OneDrive storage.
Current customers of standalone OneDrive storage plans (such as a 100 or 200 GB plans) are not affected by these changes.
Microsoft has additional information regarding the changes here. What do you guys think of the upcoming changes to OneDrive? Will you continue using the service?
Comments
Now I'm glad I decided to continue using my college's never-expiring Office 365 instead of buying my own copy. Got 1TB storage for keeps when using OneDrive for Business along with free copies of Office.
And that's why I have ~10TB of data at Google and not at Microsoft.
I thought Google was 15GB free too? @tr1cky - Are you paying 10 TB @ $99.99/month?
I pay 8€/m for unlimited BABYYYYYYYYY! (sorry, watched too much dunkey)
Looks like they lost cloud battle.
This has to be the stupidest way to attempt to cut costs. MS just proving themselves to be rubbish.
So...they look at users' files, eh?
The thing I accuse Microsoft of the most is being out of tune with what people want. Clearly happened again, not predicting how people might use their storage. How did they NOT see that coming?? Surely some intern raised their hand in a meeting and was like "You know this is going to fail, right?"
14k times the average, that means 5GB are average. Why the f*ck is it a problem then?
Microsoft lost the race to everything when Bill Gates handed over the reins to Steve Ballmer and now this new chap who is equally clueless.
That's exactly why unlimited storage has no chance of being reliable long term. You simply can't trust "unlimited", not even from "reliable" companies such as Google, Amazon or Microsoft (HA-HA!).
Also their excuse is top tier bullshit, they could just as well terminated those people with 75TB over some "abuse" clause which their ToS most likely had plenty of...
So clearly expected from Microsoft.
Of course it is bullshit when the average space consumption was 5GB per user. >.> Rapidshare used to do this.. first offer unlimited, then make em pay..
Unlimited with strict rule sets on the type of data allowed is not necessarily a bad thing. If I said "unlimited non-rich text documents" and sold access for $50/m, I'd laugh at the idea that what I was selling was not sustainable. Unlimited generic storage for the purpose of storage alone is idiotic.
Amazon just gave me unlimited for free for a year (coupon came when I bought some cheap USB cables!), and if I want to renew it, only $59.99 per year.
You just can't rely on anything, expecially the free stuff.
Okay, I am writing a FUSE filesystem driver which encodes files into Base64 and stores them into your storage service as "non-rich-text documents". Just like those Gmail FUSE filesystems already out there. Are you going to look into my documents and censor which kinds of text they may and may not contain? And that large blocks of Base64 are not okay?
So nope, "unmetered storage" can not exist, as there are no unmetered hard drives, yeah maybe if you pile up further and further usage and upload restrictions making it next to useless, it may last a bit longer, but simply because it'll be way too cumbersome and nobody would even bother with it.
That's why you have policies to ensure that people store the kind of data you specify. Unlimited works, I've seen it at massive scale first hand. Just because you can cook up a scenario in your head to abuse it doesn't mean it doesn't work in practice.
Sure, add in a policy that if you use X amount of storage with non-rich text documents that we'll be going through your stuff, if that's the way you want to play this theoretical game :P
Unlimited generic storage without policies on the type of data allowed or any kind of policing on it simply cannot work. In other ways it can, I should know, I've had root access to it :P
Remember, unlimited does not mean infinite. Common mistake. There's always a limit somewhere, it just may not be by MB, GB, or TB. You get unlimited of those, within the limits of other things, or you fail like Microsoft here. Misleading? A bit, but that's the price of marketing to the "unlimited" crowd and if you don't, they'll gladly give their money to someone who will. Life isn't always fair like that.
Just like I market unlimited domains but if someone adds 9,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999 domains we're going to have a talk about not being an ass. Why'd I do it though? Sales, and it paid off big time. Taking calculated risks is an important part of business.
Which unlimited 'cloud files' offering has a mostly bug-free FUSE implementation/driver? Google drive?
I'm wondering if they're going to remove my 15GB Camera Album bonus as well.. I hope not.
Yes, everyone is going down to 5GB on free plans.
This sucks.. Got like 12GB of photo's at OneDrive
Time to move to Google drive. Now I miss my old $5 a year Google drive sub.
I had O365 with unlimited storage since 02/2015 and planned to use it to clone my NAS to have backup and files available anywhere. I was worried about the privacy so thats why I still dong have it there. Now I am almost decided to go to hubiC as they have 50€/10TB... But still thinking of privacy but France sound much better than Microsoft...
it's not surprising at all as Microsoft is out of cloud race long time ago.
Honestly didn't expect this. I thought they were fine gathering more data for the NSA.
Windows 10 is out, so they don't need you uploading your data to OneDrive anymore, they can just get it directly from your hard drives.
Not one company can guarantee your data is safe 100%. Might as well encrypt first then store. Trade off is CPU power and time, but at least you know your data is safe from NSA or other members on this forums who might decide to hack you one day.
Youll have to use some kind of external encryption as MS can just capture your keys from within windows...