Microsoft 365 is making a big cut to your OneDrive storage perk
Microsoft is taking away one of the biggest perks that came with subscribing to its Microsoft 365 Family or Premium plan. I personally do not have a subscription, though I have thought about paying for one in the past. Not because of the Copilot perks, or the Office apps that come bundled, but because of the generous OneDrive cloud storage. Unfortunately, Microsoft is changing how that storage perk works.
From 1TB per person to a shared 2TB pool
Up until recently, both Microsoft 365 Family and Premium plans have allowed users to share their subscription with five additional people, with each person receiving 1TB of personal OneDrive cloud storage. That equals a combined 6TB of storage for the entire household. The sharing will still go on. Nothing is changing on that front. However, the total amount of combined storage is being slashed all the way down to 2TB, the company quietly announced in a support post.
1. Before
Everyone in the shared membership gets their own 1TB of personal storage, for a combined 6TB across six people.
2. Now
All members collectively share a single 2TB pool.
So, while previously everyone in the shared membership got to utilize their personal allocated 1TB of cloud storage, they'll now have to collectively share a single 2TB pool.
The change does have one thing going for it: If you never shared your subscription in the first place, you would have, anyway, been limited to 1TB of cloud storage. With the new change, you're actually getting double the storage.
Families with maxed-out allocations will feel the cut
Still, there's no sugarcoating the change, as it does have more negatives than positives. For starters, you could have worked around the 1TB solo storage limit by creating burner accounts. Five burner accounts, plus your main account, would have given you access to the full 6TB. You can't do that now.
The bigger problem is for families, especially those with six total members that have been sharing the subscription for a while. In a scenario where all six members have maxed out their individual 1TB allocation, decisions will need to be made, considering that they'll collectively have 4TB more data than the new shared storage limit would allow. You'll then have to either delete years' worth of data, move it around, or pay Microsoft more for additional storage.
Summary
Microsoft is cutting the total OneDrive storage for Microsoft 365 Family and Premium subscribers from 6TB to a shared 2TB pool.
- Solo subscribers: could benefit from the change.
- Families using more than 2TB: may need to delete files, move data, or pay for additional storage.
The new limits apply immediately to new subscribers, while existing customers will see the change after their first renewal on or after May 2, 2027.
Source:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/changes-to-microsoft-365-storage
