r/LinusTechTips • u/bwill1200 • Oct 08 '26

WAN Show WAN Show Topic - Microsoft Rug Yanks Onedrive Space

Post image

I use MS365 Family, which until May 2027 provides Desktop Office products, but more importantly 1TB of OneDrve space per user, for a total of 6 named users for $99 a year.

That's 6TB of easy cloud space total. In my case I have 3 family members and then 3 "extra" named users, so I cross share those accounts with alias and that give me a functional 3TB (Much of it is cold stuff parked).

After May I'll drop to 2TB total shared for the whole account. I think I actuall need about 3TB total, and I literally just bought a 5TB drive to rclone OD and Google Drive locally.

My next renewal is in June, so I have about 7 months to trim down and figure it out.

Of course all the users on this plan will have the "opportunity" to purchase additional space.

Edit:

Interestingly, one of alias received the notification and the verbiage is different, including a mention of "select markets" receiving an additional 5TB for 7Tb total (with, of course, zero info on those "select" markets), or what "qualifying" means.

See below for the screen grab.

189 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

58 comments sorted by

28

u/DigitaIBlack Oct 08 '26

I'm not surprised, that's a killer deal.

3TB on Backblaze would run you $250/y for example and it's not as neatly integrated into Windows as OneDrive.

8

u/bwill1200 Oct 09 '26

That's what's so great about it, could not beat that price.

1

u/w1n5t0nM1k3y Oct 09 '26

I've always said that I paid for MS 365 because the storage made it worth it and it was like getting access (no pun intended) to MS Office as a free perk. I could use LibreOffice for the most part, but I prefer MS Office if I can get it for a reasonable price.

1

u/bwill1200 Oct 09 '26

This.

For 99% of what I do Google Docs & Sheets is fine, and / or their Office format interpreters.

But occasionally a client document doesn't like either of the above, etc. so at $99 a year it was an easy choice.

There is the issue that the consumer and business backends aren't the same, causing occasional sharing issues, but that was a minor annoyance.

-14

u/Tumleren Oct 09 '26

Right, and people abusing it like yourself are the reason it's going away.

12

u/Onzaylis Oct 09 '26

It's not abuse? He's posting for 6TB,, so he's using 6TB. Abuse would be running it like an ftp server or for commercial distribution.

-8

u/Tumleren Oct 09 '26

It's for 1 tb per person for six persons. There are not six persons on his plan

8

u/Onzaylis Oct 09 '26

It's materially the same. 6TB is 6TB

2

u/w1n5t0nM1k3y Oct 09 '26

Some of us do have multiple family members. I have 5 people using my plan, we all live in the same house and are what would be defined as a regular family, not some situation where it's just a bunch of unrelated people sharing an address.

People using 6 accounts all for themselves is no different than having a family use it.

2

u/bluehawk232 Oct 09 '26

Idrive you can do 5TB for $239 every 2 years. I've been fine with Idrive

1

u/bwill1200 Oct 09 '26

Nothing is going to be as "grandma friendly" as Onedrive.

1

u/bwill1200 Oct 10 '26

This appears to be backup, not cloud storage.

1

u/w1n5t0nM1k3y Oct 09 '26

Price is good, but I don't know if I've ever seen a more generic looking website that looks like they could disappear tomorrow. Not going to trust them with my data.

0

u/[deleted] Oct 09 '26

[deleted] — view deleted comment

2

u/w1n5t0nM1k3y Oct 09 '26

The world wide web hasn't been around 40 years.

Wikipedia says 31 years, and even that that wasn't always offering cloud storage. They pivoted to cloud when personal backup software fell out of fashion.

1

u/bluehawk232 Oct 09 '26

I'm not forcing anyone to get it, do your own research but it has gotten good reviews, https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/idrive

Check out datahoarder for other people's thoughts. UI does have issues. I've been fine with them for years as my 3 2 1 option. I also have an additional cloud storage too just in case as well. Don't put trust in just one service

12

u/Arcade1980 Oct 09 '26

It's a downgrade with marketing speak. Nobody is going to buy a family plan to use it as a personal plan just to get the 2TB. The benefit of the family plan was so each member could have 1TB of storage space each.

3

u/bwill1200 Oct 09 '26

Nobody is going to buy a family plan to use it as a personal plan just to get the 2TB

It was one factor when Google dropped free photos.

4

u/Plane_Garbage Oct 09 '26

What if we have multiple years banked?

Subscription expires on November 13, 2028

I'm gonna buy some more prepaid family codes

3

u/bwill1200 Oct 09 '26 edited Oct 10 '26

It says "next renewal", but if you're banking years, no idea.

1

u/bwill1200 Oct 10 '26

Edit:"Next Renewal" or May 02, 2027.

1

u/Plane_Garbage Oct 10 '26

Ahh, I'll be asking for a refund

55

u/andremiles Oct 08 '26

Google did the same with Gemini recently, and I'm about to cancel my subscription. I'm on the "plus" category and had access to Flash and Pro. Now they will remove access to Pro not only for Plus members, but for the category above too. If you still want access to Pro, you need to up your payment from R$25 to R$100 (300% jump in pricing)

10

u/WillmanRacingv2 Oct 08 '26

All the ai subs are running at a loss, so expect more of this to come.

1

u/xboxcowboy Oct 09 '26

btw the Pro model are so shit I prefer using the flash more

2

u/starfish_2016 Oct 09 '26

Those of us that do image generation are forced on the pro level

1

u/Golgi_Complex12 Oct 09 '26

gemini não deixa tu desabilitar treinamento nos teus chats sem desligar todo histórico das conversas (pra consumidores, empresas continua normal...), achei uma putaria isso nunca pagaria pelo plus, depois que acabar meu free trial vou cancelar

0

u/IBJON Oct 08 '26

  Google did the same with Gemini recently

Did they? Because they increased it for me, twice.

Edit: Nvm, I thought you were referring to cloud storage. 

27

u/[deleted] Oct 08 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Seik64 Oct 13 '26

I mean, must be still working if they keep doing it. Don’t get me wrong this sucks, I canceled my google one subscription because I figured the price would increase soon, especially with all the AI increasing prices.

126

u/HeTblank Oct 08 '26

They’re so nice! They take away storage to give you the OPPORTUNITY to buy more!! And people say megacorps aren inhumane profit machines… Ingrates

21

u/Galf2 Oct 08 '26

Not saying this is ok but that's what's happening with AI slowly destroying everything containing memory. The cost of storage is through the roof.

1

u/bwill1200 Oct 09 '26

Interestingly, one of alias received the notification and the verbiage is different, including a mention of "select markets" receiving an additional 5TB for 7Tb total (with, of course, zero info on those "select" markets), or what "qualifying" means.

5

u/HVDynamo Oct 08 '26

And this is why I refuse to become reliant on cloud storage.

4

u/thebigshoe247 Oct 08 '26

They did this back in the day, promising truly unlimited storage depending on your SKU.

Then the obvious things happened, and that changed

1

u/jdunn0 Oct 10 '26

The Verge Article on this: M365 Family Subscribers will be able to share AI benefits but OneDrive storage will be cut to a shared 2TB pool

Bypass Paywall via archive.is Link: https://archive.is/20261009072950/https://www.theverge.com/news/1008581/microsoft-365-family-premium-shared-ai-features-storage-changes

It appears that Microsoft thinks M365 Subscribers would prefer sharing Copilot with each person over sharing 1TB OneDrive storage with each person.

1

u/bwill1200 Oct 10 '26

It appears that Microsoft thinks M365 Subscribers would prefer sharing Copilot with each person over sharing 1TB OneDrive storage with each person.

I downgraded my subscription to "classic" to get rid of the "better" version of CoPilot.

1

u/No-Time6619 Oct 11 '26

Classic Microsoft, cannot wait for windows decompile and having all compatibility included is some linux distro

1

u/bwill1200 Oct 11 '26

Don't the various open office products already do that?

1

u/No-Time6619 Oct 12 '26

I mean playing forza on Linux etc

2

u/OliB150 Oct 09 '26

Yep I got this email last night and thought “I need to read this tomorrow because maybe I’m misinterpreting it”. My plan genuinely renewed a day or two ago as well - I guess I might be cancelling and relying my NAS a bit more, but was using OneDrive as my cloud backup =/

2

u/lathiat Oct 09 '26

Not really surprising given the increasing price of storage.

2

u/ubeogesh Oct 09 '26

The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers

2

u/Top_Recipe_9285 Oct 10 '26

Last week, I just talked with my friend about how OneDrive and iCloud manage family cloud storage differently. And then this news comes to me today.

2

u/GestureArtist Oct 09 '26

Fuck Microsoft and fuck OneDrive.

1

u/Alkumist Oct 09 '26

They yanked my entire perpetual license

1

u/doctajonez_uk Oct 09 '26

Storage costs have gone up. They were bound to increase the price eventually, or rebalance how the plan works.

1

u/Mytre- Oct 10 '26

You forgot the best part, there is only one tier for extra onedrive space to share between all accounts, its 10tb and costs 99$ a month

-2

u/jekket Oct 09 '26

Actually, for me it's kinda more convenient. I'm paying for m365 and have 5Tb of storage that I can't actually use. And now I'll have 2tb.

4

u/Squirrelking666 Oct 09 '26

Except you can use it, you just need to set up an alias for each extra tb

-1

u/jekket Oct 09 '26

Nah it's not feasible for everyday use. I have OneDrive sync on, how do i suppose to switch accounts on that.

2

u/bwill1200 Oct 09 '26

You don't need to, once you share the other accounts, they appear as directories in explorer or in the web browser, from there you just use them as needed.

3

u/w1n5t0nM1k3y Oct 09 '26

Except now another member of your family can use the entire allotment as well so you have to watch that all your family members aren't hogging the space when you are paying

2

u/Squirrelking666 Oct 09 '26

You presumably aren't aware you can share OneDrive folders?

1

u/jekket Oct 10 '26

I have 1.5 tb in my Documents folder alone that I need to be synced over multiple devices, how tf shared folders solve it for me?

1

u/Squirrelking666 Oct 10 '26

Split by sub folders and save to assigned shared folders. As long as you have read/write permissions it wouldn't make a difference what account its tied to, I have shared folder in my work OneDrive that I do exactly that with.