Windows 10: OneDrive delivers unlimited cloud storage to Office 365

Source...

:)

 

Lumia 640 and 30GB OneDrive promotion

Just a really speculative wild guess here

On 02/11/2015 Microsoft.com made some far reaching announcements

Your phone is / was sitting in a box until recently

So I am wondering as it is AFTER
the 15GB to 5GB Cloud cut et el announcement anything over 15GB STANDARD simply won't be honoured?

Hence the highlighted comment above I may be wrong

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?

 

Storage location

I use OneDrive and love it. But, it is not a backup solution. It is cloud storage. If you delete the file on your PC (and are syncing) it will delete on OneDrive (and you only have limited time to restore it).

A true backup solution offers retention policies and backup schedules. There are cloud backup solutions that can work with either local data on your PC or with Office 365.

 

Is there some type of new storage technology now available?

This will eventually add up to a vast amount of cloud storage.

 

I suspect that they figure almost no one will use even the 1Tb and that this is a marketing gimmick.

Will be interesting to see how it all works out.

 

You bet it is a marketing gimmick at net upload speeds ( mine is 12mbs) it would take over 200 hours to upload 1 Tb.

 

You bet it is a marketing gimmick at net upload speeds ( mine is 12mbs) it would take over 200 hours to upload 1 Tb. My thoughts exactly...

 

Pretty good one too, imp.

 

I have had Office 365 for over a year now and I only use about 3.5GB.

At first I thought WOW sweet, but in reality, I am forever waiting for it to finish it checks every time I reboot. It usually takes about 30 seconds. I had visions of storing all sorts of things out there, but, in the end, I just didn't have that much.

My 5 subscriptions are only used on 2 machines, for me it is starting to be not such a good deal. Just not as big a need for Office since everything has gone computerized. I print and mail Christmas cards and that is about it.

 

You bet it is a marketing gimmick at net upload speeds ( mine is 12mbs) it would take over 200 hours to upload 1 Tb. My thoughts exactly... I have to most respectfully disagree. Marketing gimmick or not, unlimited storage or not, this is a very good offer beating competitors 6 to 0.

With the subscription of Office 365 Home you get now unlimited storage space. To compare, with about the same price you get 1 TB from Google Drive or from Dropbox. What tips the scales in favor of Microsoft is that buying the unlimited storage with price you only get 1TB from competitors, you also get free Microsoft Office suite to be installed on up to 5 computers.

Sorry geeks but you cannot find any valid cons in that, any valid arguments against. For everyone needing online storage, Microsoft's offer is unbeatable. Deciding for competitors, against Office 365 and unlimited storage is just plain stupid if the argument is "I will never need so much storage"; price is the same but with OneDrive and Office 365 you will get so much more.

Then this about how long it would take to upload great amounts of data to OneDrive. Let me just start with that it would take exactly as much time to upload it to Google Drive, or Dropbox. The idea is of course not that you subscribe the service, then sit back and wait the 200 hours until your 1 TB of files have been uploaded. That would be idiotic, and is most definitely not an argument against the service.

No, simply copy what you want to be on OneDrive to its folder on your computer and forget it. Your terabyte might take a month or three to finish uploading but it's done in the background, your data being all the time at your service on your local computer, OneDrive folder being as any other local storage location, showing the progress (which files already synced to cloud, with which files OneDrive is still working, syncing them). OneDrive syncs (uploads) your data in a non-disturbing way, a bit slower when you work with computer and need the bandwidth, as fast as it can when computer and line are idle.

You treat the OneDrive folder on your computer as any other local storage. You decide which files are synced (stored locally and on OneDrive), which files are only available online:



This "Online only" is really practical selection when you want to access all your files from any computer and any location but don't want them to take place on your laptop's small hard disk. You can choose to have your documents available offline on your desktop but online only on a tablet, in which case you can still access all the files on your OneDrive from the tablet. Opening the OneDrive folder now on tablet shows all your files stored on OneDrive, you can open, edit, copy and delete as if they were stored locally, only difference being that they do not occupy any storage space on tablet. Opening a Word document locally just means that your tablet picks it up from cloud, opens on your tablet and when you have finished editing it stores it again on cloud. If you want to be sure a file can be edited also when no network connection is available, simply right click it and select Available Offline. A small symbol on file icon tells you now that OneDrive is syncing it, downloading to local computer:



Personally I have to say I love it. This is so practical, take for instance the OneDrive account of the MS account I use on this laptop: over 40 GB of files stored on OneDrive, I can access them from any computer from any location in this globe of ours but as I have selected to keep most of them online only, they take less than 4 GB on my laptop's HDD:

 

Why 'free' storage isn't free

The rest

 

Kari, nice write-up.

But I think you're looking for an argument when there isn't one. The deal is a great one as you note, and whether it is a marketing gimmick or not doesn't change that. It gives MS a real leg up imo.

Now they just need to make OneDrive work the same on all supported platforms if it is possible.

 

Dude, mine is 2mbps on the upload. Most things I want to put onto OneDrive that are large, I do from work where we have about 25mbps on the upload.

 

Hi Kari. I don't disagree with you at all. For those of you, who have the desire to store data online and have the bandwidth necessary to make it practical, it is a good deal. In my case, I have metered data usage each month, because I choose to live out in country, where ISP provider choices are limited, so uploading data to cloud storage would be very costly.

 

At $250 initial investment (or less), you can create something like OneDrive and 10x more functional and more storage space (several TBs). If one is paying for online storage ( I understand OneDrive is free if you are paying 365 subscription), it will be a lot cheaper to create your own. Not only for online storage but for multimedia, surveillance, etc. both on mobile phones, tablets and PCs. You have full control of everything at home or anywhere around the globe. And it's faster. If you need to share a 4GB file with someone, putting it to NAS takes only 1 to 2 minutes from home PC. And just like OneDrive, it can also be mapped locally to a PC like a regular hard drive. It's an online storage and data backup (RAID) in one.



NAS is the way to go. Personally, I will just buy an Office installer and a NAS (mine is Qnap). I won't be taking a bite on 365 just because online storage is free and unlimited.



But it's all a matter of personal preference.