Last November, Microsoft announced several radical changes to how it administered extra storage to users of its online storage service, OneDrive. The changes included the removal of the unlimited storage option as well as 100 and 200GB paid plans. One change that was going to touch users across the board, however, was the decision to scrap off any free additional OneDrive storage in excess of a measly 5 gigabytes.
Microsoft went back on its earlier commitment to gift users who had turned on automatic camera upload on their mobile devices 15GB worth of OneDrive storage for free on top of the other 15GB they got for free after signing up. What was once a juicy 30GB guaranteed free cloud storage was going to become just 5GB soon. That day has finally come.
Microsoft has in the last few days been sending emails to OneDrive users informing them of the impending changes.
So @Microsoft says the amount of storage that comes with your OneDrive will change from 15 GB to 5 GB. @techweez seen this yet?
— Miss Okal (@JuneOkal) July 12, 2016
While some of the communication the company has sent to users indicates that any extra storage users had accrued on their free OneDrive accounts would be cut back to just 5GB come July 27th, some users are reporting an earlier, July 13th, meaning they have already faced the axe.
While Microsoft’s decision was widely condemned in most quarters and users even set up public petitions to pressure the company to rescind the decision, not much has changed. To be fair to Microsoft, it did offer users an apology in December over how it shabbily handled the whole affair and even provided a way for users keen to hold on to their 30GB free OneDrive storage to be able to do so and not be affected by the impending changes. That offer lapsed at the end of January 2016. Still, the company offered the same affected users a free one year access to Office 365 complete with another year of access to up to 1 terabyte of free OneDrive storage.
If you missed out on all those then your time is up. You can only pay for 50GB OneDrive storage or get Office 365 in order to redeem the 1TB OneDrive storage. Or, jump ship to other alternatives like iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, Box etc.
