Microsoft has announced some major changes to its OneDrive cloud storage service which includes removing of the unlimited storage option as well as cutting down the free storage space to 5GB.

According to Microsoft, this rather unpopular move was done in order to prevent abuse of the service and make it faster for everyone as well as in order to compete better with Google's Drive or Dropbox.

Microsoft will be shutting down the unlimited storage option in order to stop users from storing their entire movie collections or entire PC backups on the OneDrive and those that use the free service will now only get 5GB of space.

In a published statement, Microsoft noted: "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 75TB per user or 14,000 times the average. Instead of focusing on extreme back-up scenarios, we want to remain focused on delivering high-value productivity and collaboration experiences that benefit the majority of OneDrive users.”

This means that those subscribing to Office 365 will get 50GB, 100GB or 200GB options, with the lowest starting at US $1.99 a months. Some users will certainly welcome this as it will offer faster service but those using it for backup will have to find a different place.




Source: Onedrive.com.