Microsoft has announced that it’s scrapping its unlimited OneDrive cloud storage plan which it launched last year, as well as introducing a lower cap on its free offering, too.
Complaining that subscribers were using too much of the unlimited storage, there will now be a 1TB limit placed on the subscription service. Microsoft explains the actions that have brought about the U-turn:
Since we started 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.
Elsewhere, there’s a lower cap on the free version of OneDrive, which now provides just 5GB of storage rather than 15GB. And Its paid-for 100GB and 200GB plans are to be replaced by a single $US2-per-month plan that provides just 50GB of storage.
For those of you who have been taking advantage of Microsoft’s generous online storage offering, don’t panic. If you’ve been using the Unlimited of free plans, you’ll have a year-long grace period to slim your stored files to below 1TB of 5GB respectively. Meanwhile, if you signed up for the 100 GB and 200 GB plans before the news, you’ll keep those limits.