Microsoft Slashes OneDrive Storage Tiers, Removes Unlimited Option Following Rampant Service Abuse
The first major casualty is unlimited storage, which is being nixed for Office 365 Home, Personal and University subscribers. The unlimited option was originally introduced over year ago, with Microsoft stating that it was “just one small part of our broader promise to deliver a single experience across work and life that helps people store, sync, share, and collaborate on all the files that are important to them, all while meeting the security and compliance needs of even the most stringent organizations.”
Well, when you offer folks an unlimited service, they’re going to take advantage of it. And apparently, Microsoft just wasn’t prepared for how much people would lean on its unlimited storage offer. The company explains that people were using their unlimited OneDrive storage accounts to backup multiple machines, host their DVR recordings, and even house their entire movie collections.
“In some instances, this exceeded 75 TB per user or 14,000 times the average,” reports the OneDrive Team. It appears that “data hogs” aren’t just limited to the wireless market.
With that being said, the unlimited tier is now being whittled down to a mere 1TB for everyone. And that’s not the only causality; the 100GB and 200GB plans are also being taken away — current subscribers will be able to keep their plans for the time being, but new subscribers won’t be able to access those storage tiers. Instead, the 100GB and 200GB plans will replace by a single 50GB plan for $1.99/month at the start of the new year.
But that’s not all, Microsoft is also punishing those using its free OneDrive storage tier as well. While customers were previously able to take advantage of 15GB of storage for free, that has now been reduced to just 5GB. And that sweet 15GB bonus for your camera roll? Poof, it’s gone!
This is all pretty sobering news for anyone invested in the OneDrive ecosystem, and Microsoft is doing its best to slowly wean its customers off their storage binges. Customers that are currently using more than 1TB of data (on the current unlimited tier) or 5GB of data (on the current 15GB free tier) will soon be notified by Microsoft of their transgressions and will have “at least 12 months” to access their files and download them to a safe location before the banhammer is dropped.
