Great Microsoft OneDrive Replaces Unlimited Storage With 1TB Cap To Tackle Storage Space Misuse Issue

Microsoft OneDrive Replaces Unlimited Storage With 1TB Cap To Tackle Storage Space Misuse Issue

Microsoft’s OneDrive blog explained the changes heading to the company’s cloud storage solution, and customers might not be happy with the new restrictions. Office 365 subscribers, be it Home, Personal or University, will see Microsoft’s unlimited storage plan immediately replaced by a 1 terabyte (TB) storage cap, which is not much compared to what OneDrive previously offered. On the plus side, existing unlimited OneDrive storage customers will be able to retain data exceeding 1TB for at least a year.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is also bringing about changes to other OneDrive storage plans. New users can no longer sign up for the 100GB and 200GB paid storage plans, but they can sign up for a new $1.99 per month 50GB plan which will be available early next year. OneDrive will now offer customers 5GB of free storage, which represents a 66% reduction from the 15GB previously allotted to all users. The free storage cap applies to all users and, like other changes, will be enforced in the beginning of next year.
To facilitate the transition, Microsoft has taken a number of steps. Users who previously stored terabytes upon terabytes of data on Microsoft’s cloud storage, believing that it would be safely stored there, might want to back the data up on an offline drive (or other cloud services) before it is suddenly removed. Microsoft will hence notify Office 365 subscribers exceeding 1TB of storage about the change, and they will be allowed to keep the increased storage for at least a year. This means that users who have already exceeded the storage limit have some time before they begin to look for alternative storage solutions.

OneDrive customers who were using over 5GB of free storage will still have access to their files for up to a year after the changes are enforced, which means that the files can still be kept on the server up to 2017. These customers can also use their credit cards to redeem a free Office 365 Personal subscription, which will be valid for a year and will entitle the customers to 1TB of OneDrive storage.
The OneDrive FAQ page details a refund (pro-rated) which will be provided to customers who wish to opt out of Office 365. For those Office 365 customers who were considering using other alternatives, they can actually get some money back from Microsoft. The company has also explained that non-Office365 customers who were on the 100GB or 200GB plans with the company will not be affected by Microsoft’s new policies.

Microsoft explained that OneDrive was meant to be more than just an online storage facility, and some users had taken to backing up their entire movie and video content collections on OneDrive. Other users took advantage of the unlimited storage available to store 14,000 times the average amount of data on OneDrive, equivalent to 75TB per user. The company wanted to ensure that other customers got the complete, connected and collaborative OneDrive experience too.

Microsoft’s solution is that instead of providing more storage to some users who stored more than 75TB of data, the company introduced a free storage space limit closer to the average storage space used by OneDrive users. The 1TB maximum limit on storage goes into effect immediately, and should help prevent users from piling mountains of movies onto the cloud service. Meanwhile, with the other features rolling out early next year, users have time to evaluate their options, and one can imagine that they would be looking at rivals such as Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) as potential replacements for OneDrive.
As expected, users voiced their dissatisfaction in the comments section on the OneDrive blog post, claiming that Microsoft was now starting to implement regressive instead of progressive tactics in marketing its cloud storage solution. It remains to be seen whether Microsoft’s new storage policies drive customers to rivals, but one can understand where Microsoft is coming from. Some users (such as myself) do not even save 1TB of data on their hard drives for long, let alone 75GB – if a number of users were misusing Microsoft’s free storage limit, that is fairly excessive. 1TB is still a fairly generous amount for most customers, and BidnessEtc expects Microsoft to beef up other areas of its cloud storage service to offset the reduced data limit soon enough.

Source: Bidness