Microsoft 'Nerfs' OneDrive by Reducing Storage Tiers and Eliminating Unlimited for Office 365 Users

[dgstorm]

Lately Microsoft has been doing a bang up job at impressing tech pundits across the industry with new innovations as well as fast and aggressive moves into new markets. Of course, that doesn't mean the company is immune to a hiccup or two. Microsoft's latest announcement is a head scratcher. They basically just "nerfed" OneDrive with their latest announcement.

They are slashing the storage tiers across the board with OneDrive and are even removing Unlimited Storage for Office 365 subscribers. Here's the breakdown of their new structure for the cloud service:

• Starting now, Office 365 Home, Personal, or University subscribers only get 1TB of OneDrive storage instead of unlimited. If you're a subscriber with more than 1TB stored, you'll be notified and given 12 months to reduce your files back to 1TB. If you find that the change doesn't suit you, you can ask for a refund.
• In early 2016, 100GB and 200GB plans will no longer be available to new users and will be replaced with a 50GB plan at $1.99 monthly. If you've subscribed to the one of these plans already, you'll still be able to keep them.
• In early 2016, free OneDrive storage will decrease from 15GB to 5GB for all users and the 15GB camera roll storage bonus will be discontinued. If you're a current user with more than 5GB stored, you'll be able to keep your files for 12 months after the changes take effect. Plus you can redeem a free one-year Office 365 Personal subscription with 1TB of OneDrive storage.

Microsoft claims there is a valid reason it is backtracking on OneDrive features. Apparently, a large number of users were abusing the system by uploading ridiculous amounts of data to their accounts. Users apparently backed up 75TB of data by backing up multiple PCs and saving entire movie and DVR libraries. Still, we can't help but feel like this is a misstep for the folks in Redmond. It's not exactly the best way to generate positive customer retention to take stuff away from them. What do you think?

Source: OneDrive

 

[Jonny Kansas]

Lame that they lowered the free offering so much. I'm confused by the Office 365 thing though. We've been subscribed for a year or maybe more and I feel like we only ever had 1TB from the beginning. I never saw any option for Unlimited storage with the 365 Subscription.

I was considering cancelling it, because I don't really think we need it anymore, but $10 a month doesn't seem bad to me for 1TB of storage. We only really use it to backup pictures for the most part. At this point, Office is the add-on for the monthly fee for us.

 

[Mustang02]

So much for grandfathering in your old users. Geez MS. No lube at all? Glad I don't use onedrive anymore. I had teh 50GB promo from a few years back but no point trying to use it.

 

[cr6]

I would never put a TB worth of data in the cloud to begin with, but that's just me.
I'm sure it will be plenty for 98.799% of users anyway.

S5 tap'n

 

[Mustang02]

I would never put a TB worth of data in the cloud to begin with, but that's just me.
I'm sure it will be plenty for 98.799% of users anyway.

S5 tap'n

365 stores all files, emails, etc in the cloud. But for one person to have 1TB that's a little much.

 

[johnomaz]

365 stores all files, emails, etc in the cloud. But for one person to have 1TB that's a little much.

My Dad has every e-mail sent/received since 2002. That includes so SO many pictures in e-mails, stupid FWD e-mails about stuff and probably has attachments that are viruses that are still in there. He has at most 20 gigs of data for that, all in outlook PST files. 1TB is so much space. I have a 2TB drive in my computer for storage and the majority of it are downloaded movies. Without those, I could get by VERY easily with a 500gb drive.

 

[Mustang02]

My Dad has every e-mail sent/received since 2002. That includes so SO many pictures in e-mails, stupid FWD e-mails about stuff and probably has attachments that are viruses that are still in there. He has at most 20 gigs of data for that, all in outlook PST files. 1TB is so much space. I have a 2TB drive in my computer for storage and the majority of it are downloaded movies. Without those, I could get by VERY easily with a 500gb drive.

My work PST was around 50GB. I saved every email in it for a CYA moment from Feb 2002 until 2009.

 

[PereDroid]

I think nerf, nerfed, and nerfs is common enough vernacular that you needn't single quote it.

(Love that term when used outside of gaming)

 

[kodiak799]

Cutting the free storage from 15 to 5GB is really, really lousy.. In my case, with the camera bonus, I'm going from 30 to 5.

I have plenty of other storage, though. Unfortunately free Box has file size limits, which is an issue for me archiving large Excel and Access files. Google Drive sync will not run multiple instances (I'm sometimes logged into 2 users accounts on my computer), which is a very minor inconvenience but still less than ideal.

So I'll just continue to rely on Dropbox. There's a hack to sync multiple Dropbox accounts on the same computer, and combined I have almost 20GB.

Also, I haven't used it yet by ODrive is free software that supposedly will unify all your free cloud storage accounts. Good way to string together multiple options into effectively a "unified" cloud account. Still subject to individual storage limits, obviously.

 

[boidsonly]

M$ is just hitting the PR puppy out of the park. First the W10 privacy invasion/data collection debacle, then sneaking W10 and other nefarious updates onto your PC and now this.
I use OneDrive for all my phone camera photos-guess I'll be looking for another place to park them...

 

[liftedplane]

Glad I use my google account to backup my photos and dropbox for all of my word files.

9.99 a month for 1tb through dropbox synced across all my devices... yup much better.

 

[Jonny Kansas]

Not to mention Google is free & unlimited for "High Quality".