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OneDrive Delivers Unlimited Cloud Storage To Office 365 Subscribers

Posted by samzenpus on from the bigger-cloud dept.

First time accepted submitter FlyHelicopters writes "Dropbox, Google, Microsoft, and others have been competing to become your favorite place to store stuff in the cloud. Just this past June, Microsoft upgraded Office 365 users from 25GB to 1TB, now they are upping the ante with unlimited OneDrive storage. There remains a single file size limit of 10GB per file, it is not clear if that limit will be removed with this upgrade.

92 of 145 comments (clear)

  1. Who cares by Spy+Handler · · Score: 4, Insightful

    when most of your subscribers have an upstream bandwidth of 1mbps or less, does it matter whether their storage limit is 1 TB or 100000 TB?

    1. Re:Who cares by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 3, Insightful

      While that is a fair point... Those speeds will increase over time.

      Just this month, Verizon FIOS upgraded our service with what they call "SpeedMatch":

      http://campaign.verizon.com/fa...

      So if you have 35 megabits down, now you have 35 megabits up. 75 down, 75 up, etc...

      Granted, not everyone has FIOS, or can get it, but it may well provide pressure to others (Comcast we're looking at you) to match it.

    2. Re: Who cares by JohnStock · · Score: 1

      Dropbox on a Mac? What's that.. 0.01% of the market?

    3. Re:Who cares by drew870mitchell · · Score: 2

      The Dropbox client actually works and reliably syncs documents across devices. As somebody who has been struggling to get OneDrive to work properly for the year that I've had a ton of free storage (from the Surface Pro 2 promotion last winter), that is much more than Microsoft can offer.

    4. Re:Who cares by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 2

      Where I live, yes, I get those speeds all the time.

      We are fairly heavy users of the Internet. Between watching streaming shows on Amazon Instant Video, downloading games and apps on the PS3 and iPads, Steam games on the computer, Skype to video chat with family overseas, it works very well all the time.

      I also use 6 different cloud services. For simple storage, iCloud, DropBox, Google Drive, and OneDrive. For backup, I use both Crashplan and Backblaze to backup all our computers in the house. I work from home, so I also VPN and remote desktop every day.

      With 5 to 7 people using the Internet at the same time, both uploads and downloads, it works perfectly 99% of the time.

      That is one reason why I pay extra for the 150/150 plan, gives me 18 megabytes up and down, and I really do see the full speed. It used to be 150 down, 65 up, but they just gave us a free upgrade to 150/150 this month, no complaints...

      Other than perhaps the cost, but it is what it is... $105 a month for that speed...

    5. Re:Who cares by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 1

      I was thinking of that when I was typing it up...

      DropBox was our first "cloud" service, mostly because it came with our Galaxy III phones and included 50GB of "bonus" space with the phones. Boy, that was a lot at the time. :)

      We still have that space and keep some files there, but we moved on to Google Drive last year and then this past summer, to OneDrive when the 1TB offer came out.

      We were still on Office 2010 at the time and I was going to skip 2013, but for $100 a year, I get a complete copy of Office 2013 including Publisher (which I didn't have for 2010, I was using a 2007 copy), and 1TB per user for 5 users.

      That was a crazy good deal, so we did that, and now it is unlimited.

      The client is fine... Still not great, but my hope is that they figure out that the client does matter and they work to improve it.

    6. Re: Who cares by DeSigna · · Score: 1

      Speaking for myself, it's a market I care quite strongly about (having a Mac and being a fan of Dropbox). It's also a market that's used to paying for decent features.

      iCloud doesn't work well on anything but my single Mac. Barely tried Google Drive or OneDrive, but their clients were just terrible each time I have. Dropbox works very well on the 3 workstation OSes and 2 phone OSes I use day-to-day.

    7. Re: Who cares by Barlo_Mung_42 · · Score: 1

      So Dropbox has a chance to tread water until MS fixes that.

      Not really a bright future considering my point wasn't just about MS. Does the Google client work better? How much free space does Apple give?

    8. Re: Who cares by JohnStock · · Score: 1

      Maybe the solution is to change the OS and not the cloud software as that is what seems to be the problem.

    9. Re:Who cares by xaotikdesigns · · Score: 1
      So it takes a while to upload all my data after initial setup. After that, for most users, they aren't going to be uploading massive amounts of data.

      So it takes a few days to upload my music collection, it will only take a couple minutes to upload new albums individually, and I'll be able to access it all from anywhere.

      --
      XDInd
    10. Re:Who cares by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 1

      So it takes a few days to upload my music collection, it will only take a couple minutes to upload new albums individually, and I'll be able to access it all from anywhere.

      ^ This...

      I have to say, until you experience the joy of simply having all your files online for you any time, any where, on any device, you don't know what you're missing.

    11. Re:Who cares by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 1

      ^ The above post is why you should never, ever use the Internet while under the influence of... anything... :)

    12. Re:Who cares by TubeSteak · · Score: 2

      So if you have 35 megabits down, now you have 35 megabits up. 75 down, 75 up, etc...

      Granted, not everyone has FIOS, or can get it, but it may well provide pressure to others (Comcast we're looking at you) to match it.

      Cable's limitations on upstream bandwidth are architectural and not caused by their normal asshole business practices.

      Even the latest and greatest DOCSIS 3.0 hardware being rolled out to consumers is limited to bonding 4 upstream channels.
      Cisco's literature says it's capable of 120 Mbits upload, but that seems a little optimistic, and I don't know where they pulled 30 Mbit/channel from.

      In some markets, Comcast has pulled fiber to the home and offers 505/100 Mbit service, but the rest of their markets only have a maximum 150/20 Mbits option.

      The reality is that the vast majority of home users don't require significant upload bandwidth and, other than playing numbers games in markets where they have direct competition, Comcast has no compelling reason to do anything about it.

      I recall reading this article in 2012. It talks about ways that cable could upgrade its DOCSIS 3.0 setup to boost upload bandwidth, but concludes nothing will happen until DOCSIS 3.1 show up. That article was written 2 years ago and 3.1 infrastructure isn't expected to be widely rolled out until 2016/2017.

      TLDR: Comcast doesn't care about your upload speeds.

      --
      [Fuck Beta]
      o0t!
    13. Re:Who cares by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 1

      the vast majority of home users don't require significant upload bandwidth

      You're quite right, even with cloud storage...

      The average home user may well take some videos and pictures on vacation or for a holiday, then end up with 50GB to upload... Once in awhile...

      Even if it took 3 or 4 days to upload, so what? Few people generate that often enough to matter, even a 5 megabit upload would be fine for most people.

    14. Re:Who cares by Sqr(twg) · · Score: 1

      I used to hang out in a swedish photography/videography forum. Bandwidth is cheap in Sweden, so a lot of these guys were on 100+ Mbit connections and liked to keep a backup in the cloud. Whenever a new "unlimited" storage service came around they'd hop on and upload tens of terabytes of photos/videos. (None of wich could be de-duplicated, since it was all original work.)

      Inevitably, the storage service would update its TOS within a year, or go bankrupt.

    15. Re:Who cares by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      The majority of home users would benefit greatly from a secure, off-site backup system. I'm hoping that as broadband speeds increase they become more common.

      Having said that, since bandwidth is infinite over time many people already have terabytes in their online backup accounts. I've got something like 80GB in mine, all fully encrypted of course.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    16. Re:Who cares by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      when most of your subscribers have an upstream bandwidth of 1mbps or less, does it matter whether their storage limit is 1 TB or 100000 TB?

      Actually, I think a lot of customers aren't consumers, but companies. And I've seen reasonably big ones move to O365 as well. These could conceivably make good use of the added space.

      I don't think the average home or small business user would even fill up 1TB of space with all the documents they generate unless they distribute movies in PowerPoint or something.. On the plus side, I'm assuming it's versioned and backed up so at least the data is probably safer there than on whatever rickety computer they have.

    17. Re: Who cares by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 1

      You all must have a different OneDrive than I do...

      Is it as fast as DropBox? Maybe, maybe not... It is fast enough...

      It auto backups our pictures and videos from our phones, it downloads anything I need quickly, it fully synced 850GB of data soon enough that I don't actually recall how long it took, but it wasn't very long...

      For "free" I don't expect rocket performance, just "good enough" performance, and it does that.

    18. Re:Who cares by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 1

      Most of those "unlimited" services weren't Microsoft, or Google, or other such very large companies that can afford a hundred million dollars for a proper back end system.

      10TB of data used to be a lot. Today? Meh, single hard drives that size are about to come out, 10 USB flash drives can hold that these days.

      A Terabyte isn't what it used to be... Just wait until consumers get 4K video cameras... :)

  2. Wow by roc97007 · · Score: 2

    > now they are upping the ante with unlimited OneDrive storage.

    Think of the Pr0n! You could put the entire country's Pr0n in the cloud!

    But seriously, it'll be "unlimited" until disk space becomes an issue. Which is to say, it's unlimited until it isn't.

    --
    Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    1. Re:Wow by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 2

      But seriously, it'll be "unlimited" until disk space becomes an issue. Which is to say, it's unlimited until it isn't.

      Fair point... Of course, with 8TB and 10TB drives starting to ship and larger tape solutions coming online, it is quite possible that the storage they can hold will continue to grow as fast, if not faster, than the demand.

      Will people upload tons right away? Sure... but I don't think it will keep up from the initial surge, after all, does the average user really produce that much original content?

      Home movies are probably the single largest source of "original content" and honestly the past 6 years of HD home video for us is only about half a TB. It is growing at maybe 100GB a year.

      As for other "downloaded" content as you put it, don't you think that Microsoft is not just doing a "store once, mark for all" system, where they note that the same large files are being backed up by 10,000 users. They store a single copy and just put a pointer to that copy for everyone.

    2. Re:Wow by sexconker · · Score: 1

      Anyone willing to test the limits?
      Just upload 10 GB chunks of random data with a zip, rar, 7z, tar, whatever extensions.

    3. Re:Wow by roc97007 · · Score: 1

      You're right, it's actually a policy thing more than a cost thing. Using white box like google and I think Yahoo, the price of storage is dirt cheap. (Compensate for reliability with some decent raid/backup scheme) No reason why they couldn't take advantage of that.

      But storage on the intranet remains miniscule and expensive. Try to get a partition big enough to build a reasonably sized virtual instance, and you'll get handed 20 Gbytes because "storage is expensive".

      And so, potential customers continue to do their stuff on their own PC, because really, storage isn't that expensive.

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    4. Re:Wow by sexconker · · Score: 1

      don't you think that Microsoft is not just doing a "store once, mark for all" system, where they note that the same large files are being backed up by 10,000 users. They store a single copy and just put a pointer to that copy for everyone.

      No, their actual storage hardware probably uses block-level deduplication.

    5. Re:Wow by roc97007 · · Score: 1

      Take daily full snapshots of your 3 TB system? You'd reach a petabyte in less than a year.

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    6. Re:Wow by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      Take daily full snapshots of your 3 TB system? You'd reach a petabyte in less than a year.

      Nope. If they are using any reasonable de-dup algorithm, they will only be storing the diffs.

    7. Re:Wow by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 1

      That would work too...

    8. Re:Wow by xaotikdesigns · · Score: 1

      That's why you encrypt your backups, dedup won't work then.

      --
      XDInd
    9. Re:Wow by unrtst · · Score: 1

      ...

      But storage on the intranet remains miniscule and expensive. Try to get a partition big enough to build a reasonably sized virtual instance, and you'll get handed 20 Gbytes because "storage is expensive".

      And so, potential customers continue to do their stuff on their own PC, because really, storage isn't that expensive.

      [bold by me]
      Is that really what you mean? Do you mean that when you ask your local IT for space, you get jack squat? IMO, that's their own (bad) decisions. They can easily do the same sort of thing the others are doing to provide loads of space. There's lots of ways to do it, but here's a really simple one: use a bunch of white box servers; max out their onboard SATA with largest disks you can get; stick glusterfs on them all and enable sufficient redundancy. In most cases, they'll probably still go with the vendor suggested enterprise storage and will pay through the nose for it and disks - it's sad, but it runs and then can blame someone else if there's a problem.

      Or do you mean virtual servers (like linode, though they and most others have moved to 100% SSD)? They do keep upping the space, but you'd be right here.

    10. Re:Wow by unrtst · · Score: 1

      Except that most users' connection won't be able to upload even close to 3 TB in a day.

      Correct, and even the fastest aren't going to do it.
      On an OC3 (156 Mbps) 3TB would take over 46 hours (almost 4 days).
      On an OC12 (622 Mbps), it's about 11.5 hours.
      FiOS 50/50 plan is over 6 days.

      I don't know what FiOS fastest is (maybe 150/150, since someone above mentioned it), but that's still 4 days.
      How many people have a dedicated OC12 at home?

    11. Re:Wow by roc97007 · · Score: 1

      > Is that really what you mean? Do you mean that when you ask your local IT for space, you get jack squat?

      That would be hyperbole, but, essentially, yes. In a time when 4 terabyte drives can be had for less than $200, (wholesale, but any PC builder knows where to get them) trying to get larger than a 40 Gbyte share or virtual drive is like pulling teeth, and you pay a monthly price for the storage for which you could more than buy the storage outright every month. Now, mind you, a lot of this pays for "enterprise" drives, enclosures, storage admins, and your storage supplier's profit margin. I understand that. But it does leave a developer in a situation where getting enough for a reasonable virtual instance, even just for sandbox work not intended for production, is like pulling teeth, whereas, hey look! I have a terabyte right on my PC! And Sam next to me, he has a terabyte on his! Maybe we can do something with that.

      I support apps on a mix of servers, and the most often issue I have to deal with is full partitions. (Not the hardest, but the most numerous.) This is because we're trying to squeeze an app server into too small a space. It's a double whammy -- buy really expensive enterprise grade storage, and *then* try to cut corners by doling it out in Bumble quantities. Exactly the opposite of your suggestion.

      So, like you said, that's their own bad decisions.

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    12. Re:Wow by PoopMonkey · · Score: 1

      I think it'd be fair to ask who would have a dedicated OC12 ANYWHERE. And that'd assume Microsoft would be matching that speed and dedicated to just you. Even if you've got a wide open OC12 yourself, I don't think you'd be likely to see more than OC3 speeds to Microsoft. Probably far below that.

    13. Re:Wow by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 1

      I have a FIOS 150/150 connection to my home...

      The fastest? 500/500...

      At that speed?

      3TB would take 14 hours to upload, assuming Microsoft could take it that fast.

      My monthly bandwidth use, measured by my router, for both up and downstream traffic? About 7TB per month.

      Like I've said, I'm a heavy user... not normal at all, but people like me do exist.

      None of that is illegal content, maintaining a VPN, running remote desktop, keeping streaming music on, have kids who watch everything via streaming video (we don't have cable or satellite), etc. Also, the multiple backups to multiple cloud providers add to that, it is split about 2/3 download to 1/3 upload.

    14. Re:Wow by JMJimmy · · Score: 1

      I vote we upload archive.org ;)

    15. Re:Wow by roc97007 · · Score: 1

      ...but there are applications where I don't care about backup, and Raid 1 is enough. Moreover, I can build from there, to Raid 5 (or 10) with commercial grade plug-and-play enclosures, using hot swap hard disk as offline backup (because, as noted previously, disk is cheap) for a majority of the features of an enterprise storage setup, at a tiny fraction of the cost.

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    16. Re:Wow by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 1

      :) Normal people aren't uploading anything that requires encryption.

      My family vacation pictures, my saved documents, etc... None of that is really worth caring about...

      If I encrypt before uploading, it becomes a big fat pain in the butt to use and might as well not bother, just thumb drive it.

    17. Re: Wow by xaotikdesigns · · Score: 1

      And normal people aren't trying to test the limits of an unlimited servics

      --
      XDInd
    18. Re: Wow by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 1

      Yep, as it is, I'm using about 850GB of my OneDrive now. Do I have more to put there? Meh, maybe...

      The important stuff is there, the full system backup is handled by proper backup services.

  3. Re:Sky drive? by afidel · · Score: 3, Informative

    They got sued by the UK broadcaster BSkyB and lost so they had to change the name.

    --
    There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
  4. It's an easy marketing stratagy by Barlo_Mung_42 · · Score: 2

    I'm using a tiny fraction of the 5Tb they already give me even though I put all my photo's, music, home video, documents, etc up there. So it's already basically unlimited.

    1. Re:It's an easy marketing stratagy by tompaulco · · Score: 1, Funny

      I'm only using 0 bytes, but now that they have increased the limit, I will be using 0 bytes.

      --
      If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
  5. NSA Indexing by labnet · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What a gift to the NSA!

    --
    46137
    1. Re:NSA Indexing by Shaman · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This.

      --
      ...Steve
    2. Re:NSA Indexing by xaotikdesigns · · Score: 1

      Just don't keep your own nudes or other sensitive data there.

      --
      XDInd
    3. Re:NSA Indexing by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 1

      What a gift to the NSA!

      Perhaps... But I'm not under the false allusion that the data being on my local hard drive is any safer from the NSA.

      If the NSA wanted to read my local hard drive, they could do so I'm sure. Either there is a back door in Windows, or they could somehow get something installed on my computer to put a back door in...

      Or, you know, since they are the government, when I'm not home, they could just break into my house and physically copy the hard drive. :) I'm sure they could do that without my noticing.

      Thankfully for me, I have nothing the NSA would care about. I'm completely harmless. I'm a married middle class worker who pays his taxes and has no interest in harming anyone.

    4. Re:NSA Indexing by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 1

      All useful data reveals something about the user. Even benign stuff can reveal a user's personality or tastes or desires depending on the content. That information can be later used in marketing, or in the worst case scenario, used against the person in a legal attack (or worse).

      Perhaps, but my family pictures of our recent vacation to Disney World wouldn't reveal much.

      You know what they WOULD reveal? That we stood in front of the same 25 places that 10,000 other families did and took the same 200 pictures that everyone else did because we all went to a mass market consumer entertainment park meant to part us with our dollars in return for fantasy and fun for the whole family.

      Nothing in our family pictures would tell you anything more than that just did.

      Or have you never heard of FaceBook? Our pictures are posted there, for all the world to see. We don't care that much. We are boring (to everyone else) people, as most people really are... (even if they don't want to admit it).

    5. Re:NSA Indexing by Mr.+Slippery · · Score: 1

      I'm completely harmless. I'm a married middle class worker who pays his taxes and has no interest in harming anyone.

      Same could be said of most of the Japanese-Americans whom the federal government put in concentration camps during WWII.

      Innocence and harmlessness are no protection when governments go bad.

      --
      Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
      You cannot wash away blood with blood
    6. Re:NSA Indexing by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 1

      While you are correct, none of the nerd ideas are going to help should that come to pass.

      Encrypting our OneDrives is not going to make a difference if my government decides to lock me up because I'm white (or black or any other color).

      It is focused on the wrong problem. Hiding from the NSA isn't likely to work. Not having a NSA or a government that does such things requires solutions and actions FAR beyond cloud storage.

      What was done to the Japanese was wrong. Then again so was slavery. What has been done to innocent people in the past ten years in the name of "The War on Terror" is also wrong.

      And all the protests in the world did nothing to stop it, did they?

      If people in power decide they don't like you, your options are limited.

  6. Re:Sky drive? by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 2

    It was SkyDrive, until they had to rename it due to a lawsuit from British broadcaster BSkyB

    http://www.infoworld.com/artic...

  7. All cloud services story needs this in the headlin by sandbagger · · Score: 3, Insightful

    OneDrive Delivers Unlimited Cloud Storage To Office 365 Subscribers...for now.

    Clouds evaporate, people.

    --
    ---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
  8. Re:Not Unlimited in the least by CaptainStumpy · · Score: 1

    run a quick test: fsutil file createnew junk 10000000000

    --
    It will be better to purchase from an owner who is a good farmer and a good builder.
  9. Similar to cell "unlimited mobile data"? by CptJeanLuc · · Score: 1

    It seems when it comes to mobile data, "unlimited" always means unlimited up to a point, when the service gets throttled unless you pay more. So "unlimited within the envelope of activity that we decide to allow". Even having no information about this particular offer, I would guess there is either a "reasonable use" clause hidden somewhere in terms of service, or somehow being able to throttle the service, e.g. by limiting upload bandwidth.

    "Unlimited" seems to be one of those words that are used mainly for marketing, leading consumers to think it actually means there is no limit - but then redefining the meaning of unlimited in terms of service to something else. Just as misleading as e.g. offering "transfer speeds _up to_ 20 Mbps", "reliability _up to_ 100%", or being "guaranteed to be _possibly_ the best service available". At some point we should have laws against language which is intentionally misleading to consumers.

    1. Re:Similar to cell "unlimited mobile data"? by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 1

      "unlimited" always means unlimited up to a point

      Well of course... I'm sure they have some terms and conditions that provide them some limits, and they always have the ultimate protection. If you're really a pain, they can offer you a refund and cancel your service. But that is always an option for any service provider, isn't it?

      I'm sure they have thought about that, a few people may well upload 5TB, or 10TB... But someone, somewhere, just to be a pain, will try uploading 500TB... They'll probably cut that user off at some point, or throttle them...

      Look at Carbonite... They offer "unlimited" backup, but if you read the fine print, after various datapoints they throttle. That is why I no longer use them, I switched to Crashplan and Backblaze, who don't throttle (as much, I'm not convinced they don't to some extent).

    2. Re:Similar to cell "unlimited mobile data"? by xaotikdesigns · · Score: 1
      Well, unlimited storage doesn't say anything about speed, just the volume.

      You may have unlimited parking in a garage, but that garage still has a speed limit, probably a couple stop sighs, and a speed bump or two.

      --
      XDInd
  10. Who cares by Barlo_Mung_42 · · Score: 1

    Dropbox et al have built a business model on selling what MS and Google are now abundantly giving away for free. I'm sure they care quite a bit and it will be interesting to see how they respond in an effort to stay relevant.

  11. Re:Enough with the Hype... by SpankiMonki · · Score: 1

    Give us the real details that matter, like Terms of Service.

    Sorry, downloading a document that size will put you over your data cap.

  12. If it supports rsync I'll care. by ron_ivi · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Anyone know of such a service that supports the rsync protocol (either over ssh or any other rsync-friendly transport). If so - bandwidth limitations don't suck so bad; since you'd be typically just streaming incremental changes.

    1. Re:If it supports rsync I'll care. by LordThyGod · · Score: 1

      Anyone know of such a service that supports the rsync protocol (either over ssh or any other rsync-friendly transport). If so - bandwidth limitations don't suck so bad; since you'd be typically just streaming incremental changes.

      Yea, Dropbox. Use the Linux client. I kinda feel like I am missing something here ..... There is also a third party Linux Google Drive client. That feels a little clunky to me but would probably do the trick.

    2. Re:If it supports rsync I'll care. by unrtst · · Score: 1

      rsync.net is swell, but the price is crazy. For example, $140/month for 1 TB.
      I had to re-read it several times to make sure I wasn't misreading it. For comparison, Dropbox is $9.99/month for 1 TB.
      Granted, rsync.net has a very different feature set that is very flexible. However, I wish I could pay 1/10th the cost and manage the redundancy and number of snapshots and such myself (ie. a purpose built vm with a big data drive).

    3. Re:If it supports rsync I'll care. by ljw1004 · · Score: 1

      Are you claiming that OneDrive isn't incremental? Or just assuming it isn't?

    4. Re:If it supports rsync I'll care. by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 1

      OneDrive isn't meant for "backup". Neither is Google Drive or DropBox for that matter...

      Services like CrashPlan, Carbonite, and Backblaze are what backup is for...

      The "drive" services are meant to be cloud storage of actual files that you actually use, which is why MS Office will save directly to OneDrive if you like. I personally save locally to my OneDrive folder and let the app upload and sync in the background.

      That isn't "backup", that is nice handy storage without having to thumb drive it.

  13. Re:Sky drive? by jcfandino · · Score: 1

    And aren't they afraid of being sued by Google? Who actually has a preexistence competitive product with a similar name?
    What if LibreOffice were renamed to "OneOffice", wouldn't Microsoft lawyers have a party?

  14. Re:Unlimited... by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 1

    In fairness, I would imagine they reserve the right to throttle heavy users...

    That being said... What would you upload? Do you really have 250TB of files to upload? If you just copy and rename the files, don't you think they have a data deduplication system to compensate for that?

  15. Re:Not Unlimited in the least by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 1

    I can tell you for 100% certainty that I can upload 10GB files.

    If other people cannot, I have no idea why, perhaps open a support ticket?

    But I do know the limit is 10GB now. I do hope that limit gets raised, I have 5 files in my OneDrive folder right now that are over 10GB in size, otherwise everything uploaded just fine.

  16. Re:Unlimited... by DeSigna · · Score: 1

    It seems you're unfamiliar with the performance of 365 cloud storage.

    Short answer: your connection will not be the bottleneck.

    It's even more fun trying to migrate terabytes of data back out of the MS cloud.

  17. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  18. Re:All cloud services story needs this in the head by 0x537461746943 · · Score: 1

    Unlimited... "for now" Take bitcasa as an example. I bought the unlimited plan a few years ago and just renewed a month ago at $99 a year. They just sent an email that I have until around mid November to get all my data out by around mid November or the data will be deleted unless I subscribe to the new 10 TB plan for $99 a month. There is no chance I could afford that so I am forced to remove my data. Luckily I had most of it already local otherwise it would take a long time to download all of my data from the cloud. I have decided not to be suckered into this one either. I have a feeling Microsoft is just trying to sway people to their online storage and Office suite. Give it 4 or 5 years and I wonder if they might do the same thing (remove unlimited).

  19. Re:Well of course! by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 1

    1TB ought to be enough for anybody

    Ha! Someone had to say it...

  20. Re:All cloud services story needs this in the head by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 1

    ...so I am forced to remove my data

    I don't understand this... you didn't have local copies of everything?

    While I have lots stored in the cloud, every single bit of it is local as well.

    We are a long way off from where I'd ever consider storing stuff ONLY in the cloud.

  21. Re:All cloud services story needs this in the head by xaotikdesigns · · Score: 1
    I believe he means that he simply took his data from bitcasa since they were going to delete it anyway, essentially, canceling his account before they did anything.

    I'm just hoping that he got his money back if they offered him a years of unlimited, but only gave him three months of it.

    --
    XDInd
  22. Re:All cloud services story needs this in the head by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 1

    While you might be right, his words were:

    "Luckily I had most of it already local otherwise it would take a long time to download all of my data from the cloud."

    He said "most of it"... that is why I replied with my surprise and question...

  23. So MS biz model = Olive Garden? by jpellino · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's back! Never Ending Data Bowls starting at $9.99!

    --
    "Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
  24. MS demands address book and pics access? by mbeckman · · Score: 1

    I began to upgrade my O365 account to the Unlimited Preview but the App demanded access all my pics and addresses. Until I research this more, Microsoft can take an unconditional branch off a short pier. It seems a completely unnecessary privacy violation.

  25. Re:Sky drive? by Noah+Haders · · Score: 4, Interesting

    my work has office 365 accounts and i'll be darned if I can get sky drive sync to work. it doesn't seem like its' a replacement for dropbox or sync.com.

    BTW I highly recommend sync.com. It has the same feature set as dropbox, but it's a Canadian company and doesn't have condi on the board. I'm not naïve, I know that FBI/NSA will git you wherever you are, but seriously eff dropbox they can kma.

  26. Backups by manu0601 · · Score: 1

    Do they claim to backup unlimited data volumes? I see a disaster coming.

  27. Re:All cloud services story needs this in the head by im_thatoneguy · · Score: 2

    If all stories came with that disclaimer then all stories would be burdened with a load of FUD.

    Computers become outdated and useless, hard drives crash, thumbdrives are lost, LTOs break, RAIDs die, etc etc. Everything is temporary, no single solution is reliable and should be solely relied on. The cloud is no better or worse.

    On the other hand TODAY while the cloud is still here OneDrive gives me a really nice service to consolidate my data across multiple machines. So why would I toss a great service today because tomorrow it might go away? I got unlimited Gmail 10 years ago or so and it's a cloud service I still use every day. Maybe gmail will implode some day. And when that day comes... I'll find something better.

  28. Re:Well of course! by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1

    1TB ought to be enough for anybody

    Ha! Someone had to say it...

    No, no they didn't.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  29. Re:Sky drive? by Blackjetta · · Score: 1

    And they changed the name and life goes on.

  30. They can offer as much as they want by epyT-R · · Score: 1

    Without privacy and/or enforcement of constitutional rights, the storage is worthless. As far as business goes, what happens if data or connectivity is lost during business hours? The potential for information being stolen by governments and private entities is just too great to use such storage services for anything important. Those public SANs are massive 'hack me please' and no-such-letter targets.

    If employees need 'unlimited' much storage to do their jobs, then a local san is the most economical option for reasonable performance. Even if employees generate a few hundred to several gigabytes of office documents in their entire careers, local backups with optional offsite/offline media storage service are still more than sufficient. For private/individual use, a crypted disk (or two or three) in a safety deposit box backing up multiple onsite/offline backups works best.

    1. Re:They can offer as much as they want by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      There's stuff I really don't care if the NSA or FBI reads. If I want to keep something secret from them, I should do my own encryption. (Actually, I should encrypt a few files and put them in my Dropbox folder, just to keep things confused.)

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  31. Perfect Forward Security. by westlake · · Score: 1

    What t a gift to the NSA!

    Or not.

    Outlook.com and OneDrive have also been updated to use perfect forward security (PFS). In PFS, the keys used for each connection are randomly generated on a per-session basis. This is important because it protects against bulk data collection. Without PFS, if a law enforcement agency or hacker can demand or steal the long-term key used to secure connections, they can use that key to decrypt all historic, recorded sessions. PFS prevents this; compromising one session's key only enables decryption of that session.

    This will secure Web access, the OneDrive mobile clients, and the OneDrive desktop clients.

    Microsoft is also using certificates with 2048 bit keys on both the Outlook.com and OneDrive Web front-ends, another change planned last December.

    Microsoft expands the use of encryption on Outlook, OneDrive [July 1, 2014]

  32. Re:Sky drive? by davester666 · · Score: 1

    ...because people were confusing a cloud-based data storage service with a satellite tv service....

    --
    Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
  33. Can you imagine working with a 10 GB Word file? by hackertourist · · Score: 2

    At a file size of 100 Mb, Word is barely usable (especially if you have Autosave on [1]). I still have nightmares about a job a couple years ago that involved such files.

    1: and the larger the file, the more likely you'll need it at some point.

  34. How can you montetize this? by dablow · · Score: 1

    How is this possible and still make $$$ off the service? I know that for the vast majority of their user base won't come close to using 1TB any time soon, so this is largely a symbolic move to generate interest in their products, however what about these scenarios: #1 I use it to store my company's encrypted backups.....forever, no more need to delete old ones to make room for new ones. If every sys admin did this...the would run into trouble pretty quick. Just make sure no single file goes above 10GB. #2 As a programmer what stops me from setting up my own cloud solution, where I code a different looking front end, however I have OneDrive in the back-end storing the files, going through their API? And I am sure there are tons more that others can think of. I get the feeling this might be a cleaver trick for 2 reasons: #1 Kill the small players in that space (Dropbox etc) #2 Get more people to upload tons of material, accustomed to using online storage, maybe even kill off the local HD concept (other than for OS boot purposes) then a few years later quietly impose limitations past what the average person uses. Say for example 3 years from now the average user consumes 3TB, give 3TB free, charge anything for above.

  35. Re:All cloud services story needs this in the head by 0x537461746943 · · Score: 1

    That is correct. There are things that I deem not important but nice to have with an unlimited plan. Car DVR recordings (I never even look at them honestly), some movie backups (I can recreate them if i had to), full system backups (encrypted of course and financial stuff not stored in them) older than 2 years, etc. If the storage is unlimited I was just going to always store everything I have had.

  36. Tailing behind Google by grilled-cheese · · Score: 1

    Google recently announced they were switching their Google for Education members to unlimited storage as well. This seems like Microsoft trying to one-up Google to me.

  37. 20000 File Limit by sh3p · · Score: 1

    It was my understanding that OneDrive had an arbitrary limit of 20,000 files. I wonder if this limit has been removed as well. Many organizations couldn't come close to hitting their storage quotas due to this limitation.

    http://community.office365.com/en-us/f/154/t/226245.aspx

    1. Re:20000 File Limit by sh3p · · Score: 1

      Just to clarify, it appears the limit is in the 'OneDrive for Business sync client", not OneDrive itself.

    2. Re:20000 File Limit by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

      OneDrive for Business uses SharePoint as the storage backend. It's a puzzling choice, and seems to be responsible for most of its limitations and brokenness.

  38. Re:Sky drive? by arglebargle_xiv · · Score: 1

    my work has office 365 accounts and i'll be darned if I can get sky drive sync to work.

    This is exactly why my reaction to this story was "Giant who-cares". Instead of x GB of dysfunctional online storage that doesn't work more often than it does Microsoft is now giving me infinite amounts of brokenness to play with. It's like taking a faulty laptop back to Dell and as a special offer they replace it with three faulty laptops.

  39. Re:Sky drive? by Noah+Haders · · Score: 1

    I have a "OneDrive for Business" folder on my desktop. Presumably if I put a file in this folder it will sync to be online, then I can access it online from any computer. But does it sync automatically or is it a manual thing? Dropbox syncs pretty much every 5 minutes or whenever there's a file update. Also on dropbox there are past versions available online. Is this true for OneDrive?

  40. There is NO unlimited by mnt · · Score: 1

    So i wonder what the real limit is?