Microsoft first announced its plans to cut free unlimited OneDrive storage back in late 2015. The announcement wasn’t welcomed by those who had come to rely on OneDrive for unlimited data storage. The company said that it was cutting the free storage limit to 5GB and that it would also end unlimited usage for Office 365 users. It set the cutoff date for unlimited users on March 1st so those users will now see that their unlimited storage tier now has a 1 terabyte cap.
Microsoft had to deal with plenty of backlash after it decided to put a cap on the unlimited OneDrive storage that it initially promised to Office 365 users. The company blamed some users who were using an excessive amount of storage as the reason for this change. It said that some users were using up to 75TB as part of the unlimited storage offered with Office 365 and that it was something which could not be sustained.
It decided to make some changes by cutting down the free OneDrive storage from 15GB to 5GB and it has also stopped offering 100GB and 200GB plans. It placed a cap of 1TB on the unlimited data storage for Office 365 subscribers. Microsoft has said that the change in data storage limits will take up to 48 hours to become visible to Office 365 subscribers.
If they still have more than 1TB of files in OneDrive, then their account will be moved to “quota mode” which will provide them with a three month time period to reduce it down to 1TB after which their account will be locked for six months.
Once the account is locked, those users will then have to request a 30 day access in order to remove the files and bring the total utilized storage down to 1TB.