onedrive storage
My current OneDrive storage plan

Microsoft announced changes to it’s OneDrive cloud storage platform, severely limiting all users storage capacities, regardless of who is paying or who is getting it for free.

The changes are related to users of the paid Office 365 plans who got a boost in storage when it went from 1Tb to unlimited. Some users abused the system by storing up to 75Tb of files, which not only limits the backup system that Microsoft has for OneDrive, but also any bandwidth issues for all other users. I get that this is an issue and the change to remove unlimited back to 1Tb is an understandable change, even if it does smell of the “all users suffer due to a few being bad” scenario.

But it’s the change to all free users of OneDrive, taking storage from the 15gb down to 5gb that really burns. You can read more details here in the FAQ they posted. The storage reduction for all users seems unwarranted as there was no obvious abuse in adding terabytes of data to their OneDrive accounts. I mean, how could they? As the top image shows, I am using approx 30gb out of the 140gb I get. Yes, I don’t pay for any of this storage as I got some loyalty for being a long time user, I enabled camera backup to get more storage and I used a Bing Rewards bonus to get the remaining 100gb. That last additional storage expires in February 2017, and according to the FAQ, I shouldn’t have any concerns for that to go away before that expiration date.

But, this drastic across the board change is very much on the shortsighted end of company decisions, especially when you consider the competitive nature of cloud storage. Up until this change, Microsoft was doing a great job in competing with the likes of Dropbox, iCloud and Google. Now, they are just average and nothing special to brag about or compete with.

The Future

So given these changes, I will end up losing the camera upload bonus of 15gb. My free 15gb will drop down by 10gb, leaving me with a total of 5gb of unpaid storage. Now there is the loyalty 10gb in my plan above that is in question. I’m not sure if I get to keep that, as the FAQ is very general in it’s description of what “bonus storage” they say we get to keep. I’m making the initial assumption I will losing that 10gb.

This concerns me a lot because I have moved a fair amount of my shared cloud storage from other services to OneDrive. Their multi-platform support and ease of syncing selected folders has made it a solid service. I am in no concern of needing to make a decision for all of 2016, so long as I get to keep that 100gb until February 2017. At that time, I will have to evaluate my storage needs, based on what I have free out of the 105gb I have allocated, after all of the cuts.

I am not opposed to paying for an Office 365 account, which would give me 1Tb of space. And use of the Office apps. It would cost $6.99 or $9.99 a month, depending on if I choose the Personal or Home plan. I am obviously not opposed to paying for cloud storage given my years of paying for more than the 5gb of free iCloud storage to keep backups of my Apple devices and data.

Feedback

You can submit your feedback here if you are a OneDrive customer that will be affected by this change. I added my 5 cents of opinion.

Changes, they are a-coming. Hell, this is the internet. There are always changes. Just depends how drastic they are and how it affects our online life.