Microsoft announced that it would be removing unlimited OneDrive storage for Office 365 users last month; and the reduction to 1TB of online storage is still there. However, Redmond is offering existing free users of OneDrive the opportunity to preserve their 15GB of storage.
Currently, Microsoft is offering a transition period for users to reduce the amount of OneDrive storage they are currently using. Office 365 subscribers will be limited to 1TB of storage, while free users will go from 15GB to 5GB. Free users will also see the 15GB of photo storage vanish into the ether.
However, Microsoft is also sending out emails that will allow existing free users to retain the existing amount of storage they have. We haven’t officially received ours yet, but those who cannot wait can follow this link instead. This offer is only open to existing OneDrive users, and those who sign up for the service in the future will only receive 5GB of storage.
The decision to reduce available OneDrive storage came after several individuals began abusing the unlimited storage offered. Microsoft claimed that these people had backed up entire PCs and movie collections to the cloud storage service, and averaged around 75TB each. Which isn’t what the company envisioned the extra storage would be used for.
While this is good news for those who are using OneDrive as spare cloud storage, it doesn’t quite help those who are actually paying for the service. Although, we suppose that those are the people who abused the system in the first place.
[Source: Ars Technica]
