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Microsoft's Cloud Storage Service OneDrive Now Offers 15GB For Free
DroidJason1 writes Microsoft revealed today that they will be offering 15GB of free OneDrive storage, up from 7GB. Office 365 users will now get 1TB of storage, up from 20GB. This announcement comes after Amazon revealed unlimited photo storage for those who buy the new Fire phone. Dropbox, a competitor to OneDrive, currently has 2GB for free but offers more space if you refer people to the service. Google Drive offers 15GB of free storage, while Amazon Cloud Drive offers 5GB.
And to think that just the other day Microsoft were complaining that the NSA fallout was getting worse. Are they hoping to swamp them with simply too much data on Microsoft's servers?
That's one huge upgrade but you'll need a VERY fast connection to really take advantage
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
And when you gaze long into a cloud the cloud also gazes into you.
I don't care if it's a billion GB. Might as well put everything on The Pirate Bay.
Flickr offers 1TB of free storage for photos (last I checked). There's a script, flickrannex I believe, which lets it act as a special remote for git-annex. You do lose a little space due to some packing overhead of storing everything as a png, but it's still more than an order of magnitude more usable space than what any other free service I've found.
Just in! [Major hard drive manufacturer] is now offering [large amount of space] for [small amount of money]. This is amazing because, just [a short period of time] ago, they used to charge [small amount of money] for [almost as large of an amount of space].
No, I will not work for your startup
And who said partnerships are bad?
Some of government subsidies are really beneficial for end users.
Now if they only could remove the annoying 2GB file size cap... Its especially annoying on their payed 1TB office 365-plan.
With MEGA giving 50G for free with client side encryption, I don't understand why you would use any other service.
I got notice that Ubuntu cloud storage services are coming to an end. Storage like this is handy for family photos, I'm not sure I would use it for anything else.
Copy.com has been offering 15GB for free for awhile, and you get 5GB for every referral. I was able to get enough referrals to get over 300gb. Shameless blog plug: http://nosleep.ca/2013/09/27/h...
Copy has been offering 15GB free for a long time now, plus 5GB extra for each referral up to INFINITY.
</shamelessLink>
In an extraordinary move, a company that makes use of sacrilegious ways of collaboration using technology and ideas with names such as "open source" or "donationware", such a company seems to have attracted the attention of heretics and infidels whose sole purpose in life is to undermine the Goodness of the Enterprises. With the controversial name of "OwnCloud" they sinfully provide a way to transform any combination of: "free", "Microsoft", "storage service" and "15 GB", into a joke . Some even commit atrocities such as breaking 'politically correct' protocol and laugh right in front of the face of the speaker of these words. How this company has done this is still unknown, but speculation and rumour speak of "local computer OwnCloud instance" and "router/modem port redirection". A certain kind of the geek species even blaspheme with openvpn connections between the hosting company where they keep webpages, and the beforementioned atrocious "local computer OwnCloud instance". Yet, the consensus among the experts about this last bit is that we are dealing with pure fantasy.
But they still have a 20,000 item limit for the 1TB OneDrive for Business user so you tend to end up hitting the item limit well before the data size limit...
I have a "server" machine on my home network, with some big hard drives (inexpensive today). It is set up so on local network I can simply access the drives as though they were in my work machine, other than network latency of course. When away from home, I can use SSH and SFTP. (In fact I use SSH forwarding so I can access both the server and my regular work machine.)
Very simple. Easy to set up. Probably more secure than Microsoft anything. And no third parties involved.
I don't need "streaming" anything. I don't need DLNA or other kinds of streaming services. If I am away from home, I just download the file and view or play it locally. Disadvantage: that can take a while. Advantage: no blips or burps or freezes in my media, because IT'S LOCAL, not streaming.
I can also sync folders, if I want, via BitTorrent Sync. Again, no third party involved.
So, really: I don't need "cloud services". They offer me nothing I don't already do myself, and they add unreliability, privacy risks, and so many other things I really don't need to dick around with.
I would also like to find an NAS that doesn't have all those fancy bells and whistles, and doesn't make me pay for them. I just want it to "look like" a local drive on my home network. That is all. I will take care of the rest.
NSA, GCHQ etc. must be running out of disk space. Get a MS to help out!
NSA uploads still don't count against that limit, either!
Dropbox does start at 2GB, and this is a severe shortcoming compared to 15GB, but they give free additional storage for just about everything. I've gotten an additional 10GB, in smaller chunks, for:
Et cetera. It does kind of stink jumping through hoops to get there, but unlike OneDrive (YMMV), Dropbox's syncing program actually works.
I wonder if they are at risk of the same "problem" residential internet providers have.
Marketing and competition with DSL providers drove them to aggressively raise their base throughput from 5 Mbps to 10 to 20 or whatever they advertise. Engineering assured them "nobody actually uses this much bandwidth".
Then came torrent users and other heavy users who got not-so-hidden bandwidth caps, then the caps became sort-of policy for everyone, then streaming video took off and now 7-10 Mbps is basically an evening's entertainment in a household with two TVs and a laptop.
They still advertise cable as a 10-20 Mbps service, but now there's a public conflict over bandwidth, caps, etc.
I wonder if storage providers will have the same problem once people start finding some practical use for stashing 1 TB online.
There are lots of cloudstorage providers: Hubic offers even 25 Gb for free. So Microsoft still is not very special with their 15 Gb offer.
The two most frightening words in the English language are: "It's free!" I think I'm the only person who ever wonders why corporations give you things for free. Surely they have some ulterior motive?
I bought a Synology NAS and set it up with appropriate file sharing (and the Cloud Station Dropbox-alike). I now have my own personal cloud with several TB of storage, and it's all under my control. Tell me again why I'd want a teensy little OneDrive?
BTW, I like my Synology but almost any other modern NAS will give you the same features. Pick one you like and free yourself from relying on Microsoft/Google/Dropbox's good graces and government backups.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
With MEGA giving 50G for free with client side encryption, I don't understand why you would use any other service.
Set for a July launch.
When a Fort Knox file is stored in Azure, it is split in several fragments. Each fragment is encrypted (using AES 256 bits encryption) with its own key. Each of these fragments are stored in separate Azure containers that are generated on demand.
This shredding architecture allows for massive scalability of storage and more importantly, very strong security at the file level. Imagine the challenge of having to reconstruct a set of fragments spread across dozens of containers, each encrypted with its own key.
These keys are also regenerated every day, making it even more difficult to gain access to the raw storage.
A master key is used to encrypt keys used to encrypted each of the fragments. These encrypted keys are stored in the content database, and the master key is stored in a separate key store.
With a master key stored online in Microsoft's key store, this still allows someone with access to this master key to decrypt all the fragment keys and then use these keys to decrypt the underlying storage. This is less of an issue for a hacker scenario (although possible, given the level of fragmentation between tiers tougher to accomplish) but more of an issue of an NSA style ''request'' for your data. Assuming Microsoft were to comply with the request, they could ultimately still provide them access to your master key and decrypt the information.
The only real solution is to have master keys generated off the grid so that they could not be requested at all and not be in your cloud providers hands to hand over on request.... however this would be difficult to implement and still have a useable business productivity portal because you would still need the master key to decrypt the files.
Technical Details on Office 365 Fort Knox Encrypted Storage
I have 28 GB for free on onedrive
Mendacem Memorem Esse Oportet
I'm the network admin at a small college, and an interesting phenomenon over the last few years is the large number of colleges and universities (ours included) that have switched from Exchange/Outlook to Google Apps for Ed. A few schools have kept Exchange/Notes/etc, and a few more have gone Office 365/Live@edu for e-mail, but it seems everywhere I turn I see that yet another college is using Google Apps. MS vs Google has been something to watch of late in the Higher Ed space.
Google Drive is nice for some things -- I often find myself sharing folders in Google Drive as a common workspace for cross-Department projects -- but it likes to try to convert MS Office documents to Google's formats, and even Google's expansive storage allotments, while easily adequate for e-mail,and single Drive users, can be tight for active groups. With this change, Office 365 customers can setup group "accounts" to replace the old department shares, and have plenty of storage available. Screw Sharepoint. Oh, and while not free, Office 365 comes along for the ride with the licensing agreements most campuses have in place already. Makes me a little jealous of the MS shops right now.
Not to be a troll, but if I have nothing better to do, can I somehow easily create a 15G file of random 1s and 0s to upload (or 15 1G files)? Just to "reserve" my space (and annoy any snoopers)?
OneDrive reuploads a whole file when it's changed, which makes it useless if you want to store an oft-updated TrueCrypt container, or other encrypted container. Dropbox, on the other hand, does delta updates of files. With OneDrive, every time you add/edit/remove files from your encrypted container, it will reupload the whole container. Unless you have a really small one, that's unacceptable.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
According to that link, Microsoft holds a master key, which means NSA/Microsoft can still read your data.
I'd rather use a FOSS offering like https://owndrive.com with privacy in mind.
The Personal Computer "revolution" began because people
wanted to get away from such things.
Those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it,
and repeating something which sucks will suck just as much if not
even more, now that the swine who work for various agencies are
going to spy on every single bit which is stored remotely.
How do they backup such insane amount of data?
Relying on NSA will not help as they do not provide an API for restoring data
I have a server at home with several 40TB of space. When I go someplace for an extended time I use a 2TB USB 3 portable drive. I can connect it to my devices when needed. Why use some place as insecure as the cloud? Why give companies a look into your business, because it is none of their business to be in my business. There is no need for that kind of connectivity, there are plenty of cheaper options that are way more secure.
What ever happened to MegaUpload where you get 50Gb - for free!. Just wondering why it's is not mentioned in the article.
...because people have been passing around my referral link on some forum somewhere (all foreign names).
That would be great if I could use it, and if it wouldn't take me a week to upload all that on my "broadband" cable...