Windows 10: MS Downgrades free Onedrive storage, ends unlimited for Office 365

I do everything locally. TB's of backup storage has never been cheaper, and I control my data. If I want to protect it and guarantee its security I just disconnect it physically when I'm online--making it 100% secure from Internet hacks. Best of all, I've still got access to my data if a Russian sub cuts a transatlantic cable and the Internet goes down, etc....*chuckle The "cloud" is highly over-rated, imo. The only thing I would put there is stuff I wouldn't mind losing--which isn't anything, actually.

People these days are far too willing to cede control of their local computing environments to cloud companies, and their lives to governments--but that last is a bit off topic...*Wink

 

All of my data's on my three external HDDs, but it never hurts to have it in the cloud for convenience.

 

Seriously this will not effect me too much(from 30GB, I have 29.7GB free).
But one thing wasn't mentioned, but I suppose I need to watch out for, OneNote also uses OneDrive. But It's one of those things offered free and I installed, If need be, I can do things the old school way, to keep the amount down, and only have on OneDrive, what I need to share between machines/devices/VM's...etc.

 

I have 140GB and most of it is in bonus how will this affect me?
also have all the data backed up on hard drives.

140 GB total
118 GB available

Your plan Free 15 GB Your additional storage Referral bonus (0% achieved) 0 GB Loyalty bonus 10 GB Camera roll bonus 15 GB Samsung bonus 100 GB Valid until: 25/09/2017

 

And do you replicate it and keep it offsite? What if your house burns to the ground? It happened to my sister.

You do realize that OneDrive syncs to your computer and you would still have a local copy of the data in addition to what is in the cloud. Therefore, if the Cloud disappeared overnight, you would not lose your data. And if you lost your computer (because your house burned down), you data would still be available to you in the cloud.

For those of us with multiple devices, multiple platforms, having that data available where ever we go and on which ever device we have is handy. I don't keep my email anymore on my computer, it's all in gmail. i don't backup and save my internet favorites or history, it's all synced to my Google account. I can get to my gmail on my phone, on my tablet, on my PC, on my Mac, from an Internet cafe, etc. You realize this forum site is in the cloud. It's a huge reference of information that we all rely on heavily, but we don't store it locally.

 

Well, this isn't going to go over well...

Microsoft drops unlimited OneDrive storage after people use it for unlimited storage | Ars Technica

 

Already have a thread about this topic.

 

yep, didnt realize it

the whole deal stinks, and causes MS to lose any credibility/respect they might have regained in the last year or two...no wonder so many people dislike/distrust them

 

For misc reasons I am Office 365 Home user and 1 TB is enough for me, seeing as I am at <60 GB with whole my photo archive. Still, this change for free users will be highly contraproductive. Bad move, MS!

 

I am also still missing that they fullfil this promise: SharePoint Online announces 1TB site collections and unlimited tenant storage scale - Office Blogs

 

The worst part about this is competing services like Icloud 50gb /yr = $11.88 ( $0.99 cents /month ) Vs. New OneDrive 50gb / year = $23.88 a year ($1.99/month) . For users like me who only use it for backups of important files I have stored on External HDD in case of a failure, why would I choose a service that costs 50% more than it's competitors ? The end of the day for me it's about letting files sit in one place and not the clouds functionality (Space / price > Functionality / Integration)

If you want to jump ship to a new cloud service and don't want to re-upload all your files, or deal with the hassle of it. Check out MultCloud, it allows you to connect multiple cloud drives and copy, move, and manage between them all. It allows up to 2tb of file moving for free ( will take a while at 512kb/s for free users ). It does however run through their servers so you can start it and leave it without needing to be on their website at all once it's started!

 

Isn't this the way how they get people hooked on drugs?
Here... it's for free... and then when you can't live without it... $$$$.
I didn't know legitimate companies still used this as well.


But without kidding, I think it's a stupid move from M$. I can understand that they do this for people who thought Unlimited really meant Unlimited. Although, I can't understand how you can get 75TB uploaded on the cloud, especially when you know that you need to download 75TB again when you get a new computer or need to do a clean install.

It already takes a lot of time to download 7GB because their downloadspeed is so slow. (Or, at least, it is for me, even when I have a 200Mb/s connection. M$ OneDrive speed is much lower. Probably also because it are a lot of small files.)

However, it will mean that I have to transfer something to another service, because I keep the code of the websites I make on OneDrive, so I can work on them on any of my systems. (They use up about 6GB of what I have on OneDrive.)

Luckily, there are plenty of cloud services out there that give 15 to 20 GB for free to users, and they probably will see an increase in new users the moment M$ implements their new cloud policy.

 

The problem for me is how can you charge 50% more than your competitors ? I don't need office sub, I need a place to store important files as back-ups. Why would I stay with Microsoft $23.88 plan when I can use Icloud for $11.88 for the same 50gb ? Plus the price Microsoft wants for 50gb is the same price for a 100gb on google drive. You either are paying 50% more for the same service as Icloud offers or the same price for 100gb on Google Drive! None of it makes any sense even the tiers for pricing, this is a ploy to get people to sub for office that they don't necessarily even wan't / need!

 

Interestingly, when MS reduced free SkyDrive storage from 25GB to 7GB in 2012 the argument was 99.94% of people used less than 7GB. The free storage was enough for 6000 photos and that was surely enough. Making personal cloud storage for Windows available anywhere, with the new SkyDrive - Building Windows 8 - Site Home - MSDN Blogs
.
Now when they reduce free OneDrive storage from 30GB to 5GB the argument is some people (using 75TB) are using 14000x the average. Assuming this is true the average user is using 75TB/14k = 5.5GB so the free offer is less than the average use. But now the free storage is sufficient for 1,600 photos and they can focus on "high value productivity"

It would be more convincing without the justifications - just this is the deal, take it or leave it - but whoever wrote the 2012 justification did a far better job than whoever wrote the 2015 one.

 

It doesn't make any sense though, they integrate all their apps to use OneDrive (5gb storage is as ridiculous as 25mb email limit)! All this does on the free end for users is get them to not want to use Microsoft Services using OneDrive integration. Many free users will suddenly have a storage drive over filled and will be pissed to have to by a 50gb plan when they use less than 10 for photos! People like me migrating to new services that offer cheaper plans than Microsoft have lost all trust in storing our files in their services. I love OneDrive but not enough to pay 50% more than Google Drive or iCloud. I definitely will never return to OneDrive after this, the time I have to waste migrating my files to a new drive because of Microsoft will stain OneDrive in my memory forever now (even if they reverse their decision)! Not to mention how does this push their Android app when Google Photos can do all this without deducting from the 2/3 more space you have now ? This kills OneDrive's purpose completely on Android for most users!