Microsoft OneDrive Storage Gets Smaller

Microsoft is cutting its OneDrive customers off, dropping the free storage amount from 15GB to just 5GB.

It’s been a pretty rough patch for Microsoft as of late, at least where consumer happiness is concerned. Following on the heels of several Windows 10 fiascos, the customer service department is surely swamped with complaints about the tech giant’s latest move: dropping the amount of free cloud storage its users get in OneDrive.

Admittedly, this isn’t exactly breaking news. The company has been quietly warning users since last year that capacity changes were coming. What originally started as 15GB free with the options to pay for a 100GB or 200GB plan is now dropping to just 5GB in late July, with the option to pay for a 50GB plan. The paid plan comes in at $1.99, which is far more than what a competitor that rhymes with Sapple charges its customers for the same amount of storage. Even more upsetting was the end of unlimited free storage for Office 365 customers, who will now be limited to a set amount despite their paid status.

In even more upsetting news for consumers, OneDrive will no longer offer the 15GB camera roll storage. Better back up those pictures while you can. Speaking of backing up your content, there’s also a deadline for you to move your files out of OneDrive if you’ve exceeded the 5GB; according to Microsoft, “You will be notified and will have 90 days’ notice to take action before your account will become read-only. If you are over quota after the 90 days, you will still have access to your files for 9 months. You can view and download them. However, you will not be able to add new content. If after 9 months and you are still over quota, your account will be locked. That means that you will not be able to access the content in your OneDrive until you take action.If after 1 year you fail to take action, your content may be deleted.”

One of the biggest questions in this shift is why, and even though Microsoft addresses that very question on its OneDrive blog, the answer is anything but clear: “Our difficult business decision to change the storage limits came with careful analysis and thought. However, these types of decisions are never easy. We want to focus on delivering high-value productivity and collaboration experiences that benefit the majority of our users and these changes were necessary to ensure that we can continue to offer a collaborative, connected, and intelligent service.”

Either way, customers have been warned. Move your content to a different cloud storage provider, or risk having it locked.