OneDrive for Business: Microsoft announces unlimited storage
Microsoft announced plans last week to increase storage for OneDrive for Business customers to unlimited from the previous 1TB limitation.
If that sounds to you, it is because the company announced the same feature for all paying Office 365 customers some time ago only to revoke it afterwards again.
Not only did Microsoft reduce storage for paying customers from unlimited to 1TB of storage on OneDrive, it furthermore canceled the 100Gb and 200GB plans on OneDrive, and replaced them with a 50GB plan that cost the same amount of money as the 100GB cost previously.
Free users were affected by the changes as well, as their free storage was removed from whatever they got to 5GB.
Microsoft in December changed its mind slightly in regards to free users by letting free users keep their 15GB or storage plus the 15GB extra camera roll bonus if they'd "sign up" for it.
OneDrive for Business
The announcement made waves on the Internet but will likely be overlooked by many existing OneDrive users on the free tier still.
The changes to OneDrive for Business storage were announced last week by Microsoft corporate vice president for OneDrive and SharePoint Jeff Teper on the official Microsoft Office blog.
Microsoft plans to roll out a storage increase for OneDrive for Business plans at the end of the month (December 2015). Storage will be increased from 1TB per user to 5TB per user, and the company plans to complete the rollout by March 2016.
There are some limitations though. Unlimited storage is only provided for organizations with more than five people subscribing to one of the following OneDrive for Business plans:
- Office 365 Enterprise E3, E4 and E5
- Office 365 Government E3, E4 and E5
- Office 365 Education
- OneDrive for Business Plan 2 and SharePoint Online Plan 2
Teper notes that organizations can request a storage bump beyond 5TB by contacting Microsoft support.
All other OneDrive customers, subscribed to all Enterprise, business and standalone plans not mentioned above, wont have their storage quota increased beyond 1TB.
Other changes
The same blog post mentions other changes. One is the release of the OneDrive for Business new generation sync client that is available for Windows and Mac computer systems.
It features improved reliability and performance, selective sync, support for large files up to 10GB in size, and no 20,000 file sync limit as it has been removed by Microsoft.
IT professionals can deploy the new sync client for OneDrive silently for end users. One limitation us currently that the client does not support SharePoint document libraries, but Microsoft plans to integrate those in the future.
That's one reason why the new sync client works side-by-side with the old client. Microsoft is working on "other important features" such as Office integration to support the co-authoring of documents and sharing scenarios.
The preview sync client will be updated automatically to the release version according to Microsoft.
The OneDrive mobile applications have received updates as well. Microsoft released a new OneDrive app for Windows 10 Mobile for instance and added support for offline storage to OneDrive for iOS (the Android app got the update in September 2015 already).
Resources
- Get started with the OneDrive for Business Next Generation Sync Client in Windows
- Deploying the OneDrive for Business Next Generation Sync Client in an enterprise environment
Closing Words
OneDrive customers who had their unlimited storage revoked by Microsoft are probably wondering why Microsoft decided to go the "unlimited route" once again, and why it decided to exclude them from the deal.
One possible explanation is that OneDrive for Business customers are less likely to take advantage of the unlimited storage offer but things don't really add up in the end, and Microsoft's timing of events does not really help either.
One could even come to the assumption that the company had to free up storage from regular paying customers to provide businesses with the extended storage opportunities.
Whatever the reason may be, OneDrive is quite the mess right now. (via Groovypost)
Now Read about: OneDrive alternatives

Martin, I would appreciate that you do not censor this post, as it’s informative writing.
Onur, there is a misleading statement “[…] GIFs are animated images …”. No, obviously you don’t seem to have take much notice of what you were told back in March regarding; Graphics Interchange Format (GIF).
For example, https://www.ghacks.net/2023/03/31/whats-gif-explanation-and-how-to-use-it/#comment-4562919 (if you had read my replies within that thread, you might have learnt something useful). I even mentioned, “GIF intrinsically supports animated images (GIF89a)”.
You linked to said article, [Related: …] within this article, but have somehow failed to take onboard what support you were given by several more knowledgeable people.
If you used AI to help write this article, it has failed miserably.
AI is stupid, and it will not get any better if we really know how this all works. Prove me wrong.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IYl1sTIOHI
Martin, [#comment-4569908] is only meant to be in: [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/07/09/how-to-send-gifs-on-iphone-two-different-ways/]. Whereas it appears duplicated in several recent random low-quality non relevant articles.
Obviously it [#comment-4569908] was posted: 9 July 2023. Long before this thread even existed… your database is falling over. Those comments are supposed to have unique ID values. It shouldn’t be possible to duplicate the post ID, if the database had referential integrity.
Don’t tell me!
Ghacks wants the state to step in for STATE-MANDATED associations to save jobs!!!
Bring in the dictatorship!!!
And screw Rreedom of Association – too radical for Ghacks maybe
GateKeeper ?
That’s called “appointing” businesses to do the state’s dirty work!!!!!
But the article says itself that those appointed were not happy – implying they had not choice!!!!!!
@The Dark Lady,
@KeZa,
@Database failure,
@Howard Pearce,
@Howard Allan Pearce,
Note: I replaced the quoted URI scheme: https:// with “>>” and posted.
The current ghacks.net is owned by “Softonic International S.A.” (sold by Martin in October 2019), and due to the fate of M&A, ghacks.net has changed in quality.
>> ghacks.net/2023/09/02/microsoft-is-removing-wordpad-from-windows/#comment-4573130
Many Authors of bloggers and advertisers certified by Softonic have joined the site, and the site is full of articles aimed at advertising and clickbait.
>> ghacks.net/2023/08/31/in-windows-11-the-line-between-legitimate-and-adware-becomes-increasingly-blurred/#comment-4573117
As it stands, except for articles by Martin Brinkmann, Mike Turcotte, and Ashwin, they are low quality, unhelpful, and even vicious. It is better not to read those articles.
How to display only articles by a specific author:
Added line to My filters in uBlock Origin: ghacks.net##.hentry,.home-posts,.home-category-post:not(:has-text(/Martin Brinkmann|Mike Turcotte|Ashwin/))
>> ghacks.net/2023/09/01/windows-11-development-overview-of-the-august-2023-changes/#comment-4573033
By the way, if you use an RSS reader, you can track exactly where your comments are (I’m an iPad user, so I use “Feedly Classic”, but for Windows I prefer the desktop app “RSS Guard”).
RSS Guard: Feed reader which supports RSS/ATOM/JSON and many web-based feed services.
>> github.com/martinrotter/rssguard#readme
We all live in digital surveillance glass houses under scrutiny of evil people because of people like Musk. It’s only fair that he takes his turn.
“Operating systems will be required to let the user choose the browser, virtual assistant and search engine of their choice. Microsoft cannot force users to use Bing or Edge. Apple will have to open up its iOS operating system to allow third-party app stores, aka allow sideloading of apps. Google, on the other hand, will need to provide users with the ability to uninstall preloaded apps (bloatware) from Android devices. Online services will need to allow users to unsubscribe from their platform easily. Gatekeepers need to provide interoperability with third-parties that offer similar services.”
Wonderful ! Let’s hope they’ll comply with that law more than they are doing with the GDPR.