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Microsoft Didn’t Know You’d Take OneDrive's 'Unlimited' Storage This Far

Microsoft is scrapping unlimited storage, but Amazon’s still got you.
Rachel Pick
New York, US

A year after its launch, Microsoft is making some changes to its OneDrive cloud storage plans—including eliminating the unlimited storage offered to Office 365 subscribers, because according to Microsoft, some people got greedy.

In a post to the OneDrive blog, Microsoft wrote: "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."

Okay, that's a lot of data. But if you're offering unlimited storage, shouldn't the storage be… unlimited?

In any case, unlimited OneDrive storage is no longer. Now Office 365 subscribers get 1 TB storage space, and they have a year to pare down their data to fit under the new limit. Also, if this makes you want to unsubscribe from 365, Microsoft will offer a pro-rated refund. (An Office 365 subscription, which includes access to the latest versions of apps like Word and Excel, starts at $69 per year for individuals.)

There were some other changes, too: the free version of OneDrive is now capped at 5 GB instead of 15, and 100 GB and 200 GB paid plans are no longer an option for new users. Instead, there will be a 50 GB plan on offer for $1.99 a month.

Microsoft's changes are in line with its vision for OneDrive as not just an emergency storage facility, but a tool for collaboration. Unfortunately, an emergency storage facility would be a useful and reassuring thing for a lot of people to have. Luckily, Amazon still offers unlimited storage on CloudDrive for $60 a year, and will protect your many terabytes in the face of a digital Armageddon.