It was only last year that Microsoft announced unlimited OneDrive storage for its Office 365 consumer subscribers. Now, Microsoft is going back on its word by limiting the storage available to Office 365 Home, Personal and University users to 1TB that matches its professoinal offering. This is too big a reduction if Microsoft’s claim that some users fill up to 75TB of its service were true.

The bad news extend to free users too. They will be seeing their storage shrinking next year from 15GB to 5GB and Microsoft is doing away with the 15GB camera roll as well. Even the paid plans for 100GB and 200GB of storage will be abolished too. What remains is the US$2 per month 50GB plan.

Of course, Microsoft has to deal with the backlash from its change of heart. The company is offering pro-rated refunds if you’re unhappy and can’t cope with the change in your subscription. Otherwise, Office 365 users with over 1TB of material stored on the cloud have at least a year to transfer them somewhere else, after which you’ll get six months of read-only access to them and any later than that, they might be deleted.

Free users have even less time. 90 days to get your files out or nine months of read-only access and afterwards it will be deleted.

Some people are definitely taking advantage of the generous deal. However, now, there seems to be less reasons to choose OneDrive over other cloud storage solutions like iCloud, Dropbox and Google Drive.

Source: OneDrive, OneDrive changes FAQ