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Microsoft Cuts OneDrive Storage Limits, Citing Abuse (onedrive.com)

Posted by Soulskill on from the now-that-they-have-you dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft previously offered Office 365 subscribers unlimited space on their OneDrive cloud storage platform. Now, the company has announced that it's reducing the limit to 1 TB, citing abuse from a small number of users, some of whom dropped 75 TB worth of data in Microsoft's cloud. In addition, Microsoft is cutting the size of their limited storage plans. They used to offer 100 GB for $2/month and 200 GB for 4$/month. Those plans are being replaced with 50 GB for $2/month (existing subscribers will get to keep their plans, for now). Microsoft is also decreasing the amount of space users get for free from 15 GB to 5 GB, and discontinuing the 15 GB camera roll bonus. These changes will roll out in "early 2016," and users will have up to a year to get down under the new caps.

17 of 330 comments (clear)

  1. Using your advertised space != Abuse by guruevi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Don't advertise as unlimited if uploading 70TB of data is too much. It's called false advertising and is against the law in European countries. Sadly, the US doesn't have good consumer protection laws.

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    1. Re:Using your advertised space != Abuse by Sowelu · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I dunno, it's hardly false advertising to say "this policy isn't working for us, we're changing it going forward, but you can keep that extra storage for 12 months as compensation". Because that's what they're doing. Is it false advertising to ever change what plans you choose to offer?

    2. Re:Using your advertised space != Abuse by arth1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I thought all the Microsoft data was stored in Ireland. Wasn't that their previous excuse?

      No, it's just their money that is stored in Ireland.

    3. Re:Using your advertised space != Abuse by lgw · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They advertised unlimited and provided unlimited, now they're warning everyone it's not unlimited, and in a year will stop providing unlimited. There's no way you can twist that to be false advertising.

      It's always annoying what a company changes a product in a way you don't like, or raises prices for the same thing, but that has nothing to do with false advertising. Companies that do that excessively are good to avoid, of course, but products do evolve over time.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    4. Re:Using your advertised space != Abuse by suutar · · Score: 5, Informative

      actually, they're not. TFA does not use the word abuse; that was injected by the submitter or editor. MS described the use of 75TB as an "extreme backup scenario"

    5. Re: Using your advertised space != Abuse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Pray they do not alter it further.

  2. The real definition of "abuse" by SuperKendall · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Claiming you are offering some very large resource, then pulling that away in short order is REAL abuse.

    If the number of people "abusing" the system (with only 75TB of data) then why couldn't Microsoft have just absorbed those users? That's only 75x the current limit, are the number of users of the system in the mere thousands?

    I almost signed up with them to upload a few TB of photos/video I've taken over the years as an online backup. Good thing I didn't go with Microsoft!

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:The real definition of "abuse" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      If the number of people "abusing" the system (with only 75TB of data) then why couldn't Microsoft have just absorbed those users? That's only 75x the current limit, are the number of users of the system in the mere thousands?

      They probably could have, but the FAQ linked from TFA indicates that they're making these changes because they're not in the backup business, they want people to use OneDrive for collaboration and such.

      From the FAQ (emphasis mine)

      Why are we making changes?

      Since starting 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. Instead of focusing on extreme backup scenarios, we want to remain focused on delivering high-value productivity and collaboration experiences that benefit the majority of OneDrive users.

      So, the service was being used in ways that they didn't anticipate and that they don't want to support, so they're changing it, and giving you a year to make other arrangements. There are a lot of reasons to hate Microsoft, but that seems perfectly reasonable to me.

  3. They admit user data snooping! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How would they know about "entire movie collections" being stored?
    So very comforting!

  4. Re:Abuse? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ah, never mind... RTFA, they don't call it abuse. Stupid summary, then.

  5. abuse from the people with 15GB space by itsme1234 · · Score: 4, Informative

    They are citing abuse over 1TB but are cutting those having 15GB. Go figure...

    Remember when Skydrive had 25GB free?

    Half the space of Gdrive for the 1.99 plan ... that will go well.

    Users will have up to a year to get under the new caps? Like how, once January 2016 comes you will only be able to delete stuff. Sure, they won't nuke your whopping 15GB of data but still you won't be able store/share/change anything once you are over the top...

  6. we did this with email, people dont get it. by nimbius · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ive worked for several companies that do this shit to keep up with, usually, Google. They unveil unlimited email, and then 2 years later accounting shoots through the roof with the amount it costs them. upper management is baffled as to why this is so expensive, and ops then spend 6 months carving away at spam accounts until things return to normal/affordable.

    What microsoft doesnt understand is that Google does not operate in the traditional weasle-word sense of "enterprise grade." while youre purchasing shiny new netapps, theyre using off the shelf commodity hard drives modelled by their own statisticians to predict failure. they dont repair arrays or disks, they dont have to worry about memory failures. anything that dies gets chucked, replaced, reprovisioned, and brought back into the fold as if nothing ever happened. this free storage model works for them because the very same ecosystem microsoft fostered and is now constrained by, is not part of what Google has intentionally designed.

    --
    Good people go to bed earlier.
  7. Microsoft didn't see the high usage coming? by QuietLagoon · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Microsoft has said that Windows 10 will be free with no monthly or yearly charges. Is Microsoft going to renege on that also?

    .
    Why should anyone believe them when they say "no"?

  8. I promise by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 4, Insightful
    to cut back my zero useage of one drive from zero bytes to -0 bytes.

    Seriously folks

    This

    is

    the

    Goddamned

    Cloud!

    Here today, and vanished into blue sky tomorrow.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  9. Re:You would think these companies would learn by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Unlimited, as a word, has a meaning. That meaning becomes meaningless if you change the definition simply because someone fully tests the the terminology.

    The point being, "Unlimited" is a great marketing term, but will cause issues in practicality. Do not use it if you can't fathom people pushing the limit towards infinity.

    The lawyers need to put their heads together and come up with a commercial definition of "unlimited" that 99.9% of us can live with.

    No, they don't. Marketing droids can say "We offer 'nearly unlimited*' storage" and then define what "nearly unlimited" actually means. e.g. "*Nearly Unlimited = 25 TB" (or whatever they want to define it as)

    --
    Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
  10. Re:Pron by hawguy · · Score: 5, Funny

    Better start finding a new home for your porno collection!

    All my porn is in ASCII format, so it doesn't take much room.

    So is mine, but those ASCII movies still take up space and I have over 100TB in my collection -- especially the new 4K movies. You should see how many monitors I had to put up to display a 4096 x 2160 xterm.

  11. Re:Photos by sexconker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Plus, hard copies aren't nearly secure enough. Even the best archival quality printing will fade. That's even true just for the relatively short amount of time some of us have been keeping digital archives.

    Perhaps you just never did anything interesting ever...

    One day you will die.
    Your children, friends, neighbors, or government will then go through your crap and toss the vast majority of it out.
    When those people die, the same will happen to them, and wait trace remained of your shit will be further diluted.

    Your futile efforts to preserve everything are nothing but a symptom of your inability to accept your own mortality.
    Even if you die on a cross or you end up buried in a pyramid, people will forget you and your mark on the world will fade out of existence.

    TLDR: Let it go, let it goooooooo!