Microsoft Kills Unlimited OneDrive Storage, Reduces Cap for Office 365 Users

What seemed like unlimited storage on your OneDrive account, no longer is. Microsoft has announced that it is ending the unlimited storage offering on its cloud storage service, and said it putting a cap of 1TB of storage for Office 365 subscribers.

The Redmond-based company has blamed a number of greedy users (or "over enthusiastic" people) for the change of heart. It noted that a number of users backed up computers and their entire DVR movie collections to their OneDrive account, exceeding 75TB usage in some cases.

"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," it wrote in a blog post.

As a result, not only will it be dropping the unlimited storage plan for Office 365 Home, Personal, and University subscribers to 1TB from early 2016, it will also cut down the free storage from 15GB to 5GB it offers "for all users, current and new." These changes will come in effect starting early next year. Users who're currently using more than 5GB of storage will have access to their files for next "12 months."

Furthermore, the company announced that the 100GB and 200GB storage plans that it current offers at a price point of $1.99 and $2.99 respectively, will also be unavailable from early next year for new users. The company has revised the data plan to $1.99 for 50GB. The revision wouldn't come in effect until next year. Existing users with "standalone OneDrive storage plans" will be unaffected.

As part of the move, Microsoft will also be curtailing the 15GB OneDrive storage it offered for free to users who enable automatic camera roll storage to 5GB.

Users who have stored more than 1TB of files in their OneDrive account will be notified and the company is willing to store it for the next 12 months. Office 365 users who're unhappy with the changes can request for a refund from the company.