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Microsoft Cloud Data Storage

Microsoft's Cloud Storage Service OneDrive Now Offers 15GB For Free 99

Posted by samzenpus from the bigger-is-better dept.
DroidJason1 writes Microsoft revealed today that they will be offering 15GB of free OneDrive storage, up from 7GB. Office 365 users will now get 1TB of storage, up from 20GB. This announcement comes after Amazon revealed unlimited photo storage for those who buy the new Fire phone. Dropbox, a competitor to OneDrive, currently has 2GB for free but offers more space if you refer people to the service. Google Drive offers 15GB of free storage, while Amazon Cloud Drive offers 5GB.
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Microsoft's Cloud Storage Service OneDrive Now Offers 15GB For Free More

Microsoft's Cloud Storage Service OneDrive Now Offers 15GB For Free

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  • And to think that just the other day Microsoft were complaining that the NSA fallout was getting worse. Are they hoping to swamp them with simply too much data on Microsoft's servers?

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 )
      They decided to make a virtue of necessity and classify the NSA's copy of your data as the 'offsite backup', thus freeing up enough space to expand their offering.

    • And to think that just the other day Microsoft were complaining that the NSA fallout was getting worse. Are they hoping to swamp them with simply too much data on Microsoft's servers?

      So, would you expect Microsoft to hold it's breath while the lawmakers pull their collective behinds together to reign in the runamok NSA? Should they stop doing business while they wait for the political system?

    • 15GB free, 1TB $80 (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jane Q. Public ( 1010737 ) on Monday June 23, 2014 @01:37PM (#47299517)
      I have a "server" machine on my home network, with some big hard drives (inexpensive today). It is set up so on local network I can simply access the drives as though they were in my work machine, other than network latency of course. When away from home, I can use SSH and SFTP. (In fact I use SSH forwarding so I can access both the server and my regular work machine.)

      Very simple. Easy to set up. Probably more secure than Microsoft anything. And no third parties involved.

      I don't need "streaming" anything. I don't need DLNA or other kinds of streaming services. If I am away from home, I just download the file and view or play it locally. Disadvantage: that can take a while. Advantage: no blips or burps or freezes in my media, because IT'S LOCAL, not streaming.

      I can also sync folders, if I want, via BitTorrent Sync. Again, no third party involved.

      So, really: I don't need "cloud services". They offer me nothing I don't already do myself, and they add unreliability, privacy risks, and so many other things I really don't need to dick around with.

      I would also like to find an NAS that doesn't have all those fancy bells and whistles, and doesn't make me pay for them. I just want it to "look like" a local drive on my home network. That is all. I will take care of the rest.

      • I can also sync folders, if I want, via BitTorrent Sync. Again, no third party involved.

        AFAIK BT Sync does involve a third party. Cut your connection to the internet and it mysteriously doesnt seem to sync with other devices on your LAN.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by chihowa ( 366380 ) *

          Yeah. Using mysterious black box software and making/trusting claims about its security is a bit naive.

          • GP: I meant it doesn't involve any third party "cloud service".

            Parent: I didn't say I trusted it. I said I could sync with it. Regardless: keep in mind that whenever you use iCloud or Microsoft Azure or Google, you're trusting mysterious black box software. So let's keep things in perspective.

            • You cant know that-- we already know that its syncing requires a connection to the cloud, until someone takes the time to break out wireshark you dont know that its not sending data or metadata to the cloud as well.

        • According to the user manual, no internet connection is required.
          http://btsync.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/BitTorrentSyncUserGuide.pdf [amazonaws.com]

          On page 2:

          Connection
          The devices in sync are connected directly.
          Ðonnection is established by use of TCP,
          UDP, NAT traversal, UPnP port mapping, and relay server. If your devices are on a local
          network, BitTorrent Sync will synchronize them without the Internet connection.

    • Note that encfs is perfect for this:
      - encrypts using AES-256
      - easy to use
      - works on linux :-)
      - and there's at least one app for Android that is compatible with the encryption protocol
      - each file still is stored as a single file so:
      -- no issues with losing all your data at once :-)
      -- replication can still be file by file
      - works through Fuse, doesn't need admin rights, kernel drivers and stuff :-)

      http://www.arg0.net/encfs [arg0.net]
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... [wikipedia.org]

  • That's one huge upgrade but you'll need a VERY fast connection to really take advantage

    • That's one huge upgrade but you'll need a VERY fast connection to really take advantage

      Yup.

      Ironically the main provider of that "VERY fast connection" to Office 365 is Google.

    • Re:From 20GB to 1TB for Office 365?? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Monday June 23, 2014 @01:03PM (#47299303)

      The reason why companies can offer such large sizes for free is because most people will not come close. They probably looked at the statics and saw each user was using an average of 3gigs and not even using the 20gigs. However other companies are advertising more, so they just reconfigured the quota system to 1TB and they are competitive again. No major upgrade to their systems, just changing a few bits around.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by pnutjam ( 523990 )
        That's true, nobody has the patience to upload large files or file sets and their ISP will dump the connection if it takes a day.

      • I wonder if they are at risk of the same "problem" residential internet providers have.

        Marketing and competition with DSL providers drove them to aggressively raise their base throughput from 5 Mbps to 10 to 20 or whatever they advertise. Engineering assured them "nobody actually uses this much bandwidth".

        Then came torrent users and other heavy users who got not-so-hidden bandwidth caps, then the caps became sort-of policy for everyone, then streaming video took off and now 7-10 Mbps is basically an evenin

      • Cloud storage is the fractional reserve bank of the internet.

  • Just remember who actually owns that data (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 23, 2014 @12:30PM (#47299067)

    And when you gaze long into a cloud the cloud also gazes into you.

  • Just in! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GWBasic ( 900357 ) <slashdot@NospaM.andrewrondeau.com> on Monday June 23, 2014 @12:33PM (#47299083) Homepage
    Just in! [Major hard drive manufacturer] is now offering [large amount of space] for [small amount of money]. This is amazing because, just [a short period of time] ago, they used to charge [small amount of money] for [almost as large of an amount of space].
    • It's pretty amazing news really when you think that there are only a dozen or so other companies that are better liked and have better offerings doing the same thing for free.
      In all seriousness though at $7 a month for 1 TB and Office 365 the people who still insist on Microsoft Office are getting a pretty good deal compared to $10 a month for 1 TB and Google Apps. I personally prefer Google Apps over Microsoft Office and prefer not having to use either in general, but the interoperability between other peo

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

        The devil is in the details. Most of the ones offering large amounts of free storage have some fairly annoying limitations, like low maximum file sizes or the need to use their own stupid software to sync the data. OneDrive has the advantage of being intergrated well into Windows, but also the disadvantage of relying solely on that integration and not offering FTP/RSYNC or any good solution for Android/Linux.

  • And who said partnerships are bad?
    Some of government subsidies are really beneficial for end users.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday June 23, 2014 @12:46PM (#47299177)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Because I don't trust the owner. That doesn't mean I trust Microsoft, either.

    • With MEGA giving 50G for free with client side encryption, I don't understand why you would use any other service.

      Set for a July launch.

      When a Fort Knox file is stored in Azure, it is split in several fragments. Each fragment is encrypted (using AES 256 bits encryption) with its own key. Each of these fragments are stored in separate Azure containers that are generated on demand.

      This shredding architecture allows for massive scalability of storage and more importantly, very strong security at the file level. Imagine the challenge of having to reconstruct a set of fragments spread across dozens of containers, each encrypted with its own key.

      These keys are also regenerated every day, making it even more difficult to gain access to the raw storage.

      A master key is used to encrypt keys used to encrypted each of the fragments. These encrypted keys are stored in the content database, and the master key is stored in a separate key store.

      With a master key stored online in Microsoft's key store, this still allows someone with access to this master key to decrypt all the fragment keys and then use these keys to decrypt the underlying storage. This is less of an issue for a hacker scenario (although possible, given the level of fragmentation between tiers tougher to accomplish) but more of an issue of an NSA style ''request'' for your data. Assuming Microsoft were to comply with the request, they could ultimately still provide them access to your master key and decrypt the information.

      The only real solution is to have master keys generated off the grid so that they could not be requested at all and not be in your cloud providers hands to hand over on request.... however this would be difficult to implement and still have a useable business productivity portal because you would still need the master key to decrypt the files.

      Technical Details on Office 365 Fort Knox Encrypted Storage [microsofttrends.com]

    • Because MEGA is a fucking pile of useless shit that doesn't allow people to download files with any regular Web browser.

    • and what exactly is stopping you using client side encryption and storing in onedrive or amazon or googles service? personally I would not trust ANY of them with data that I considered sensitive enough to need encryption and I certainly would not be using encryption software provided by any of the cloud providers themselves. I see no advantage to anything offered by MEGA and hence I don't understand why anyone would use that service.

  • I got notice that Ubuntu cloud storage services are coming to an end. Storage like this is handy for family photos, I'm not sure I would use it for anything else.

    • Storage like this is handy for family photos, I'm not sure I would use it for anything else.

      That's the reason I went with flickr. OneDrive will talk about the photo sharing experience, but it kind of sucks. It's great for the scenario of creating a folder of pictures to be shared with one person one time, but on a continuous basis of posting photos for people to see, it sucks. Flickr on the other hand is designed just for photo sharing, and it does it fabulously.

      • Not sure I've tried flickr, I will look into it. I liked dropbox for this, but I noticed the uploaded photo is usually reduced quality?

        Also, my OneDrive is currently showing 7GB total capacity, unless I gather other users.

        • Mine is showing 25GB and I still have 5GB left. I guess being an early adopter has its advantages :)

          I use it as a free backup for the family photos. Otherwise it'd be dropboxed or crashplanned.

  • Copy.com has been offering 15GB for free for awhile, and you get 5GB for every referral. I was able to get enough referrals to get over 300gb. Shameless blog plug: http://nosleep.ca/2013/09/27/h... [nosleep.ca]
  • Copy [copy.com] has been offering 15GB free for a long time now, plus 5GB extra for each referral up to INFINITY.


    </shamelessLink>

    • Note also, if you take him up on that referral link, not only does he get an extra 5GB, but you do, too. 20GB, not 15GB. (Rats, he beat me to it...)

      Another feature of copy.com is that the storage accounting for shared storage is shared. So, if you have a 1GB file that you share with nine other copy.com users, you each get charged only 100MB.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Torp ( 199297 )

        Interesting one. Does the sync work as well as Dropbox?

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by xyankee ( 693587 )

          Copy is good, sync works well. I'm up to 2.8TB of free space from referrals in one account of mine, and 600GB in another. In terms of free-for-life space (supposedly) that's pretty rad.

          Two complaints:
          1. Their iOS app is a bit lacking. It can't play audio files in the background, so when you switch apps your music stops playing which is annoying. Dropbox for iOS continues streaming the music in the background.
          2. It doesn't seem super fast, maybe because I only have a free account. I rarely see syncs top 1MB/

  • In an extraordinary move, a company that makes use of sacrilegious ways of collaboration using technology and ideas with names such as "open source" or "donationware", such a company seems to have attracted the attention of heretics and infidels whose sole purpose in life is to undermine the Goodness of the Enterprises. With the controversial name of "OwnCloud" they sinfully provide a way to transform any combination of: "free", "Microsoft", "storage service" and "15 GB", into a joke . Some even commit atr

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Torp ( 199297 )

      OwnCloud is good if you're willing to take the time to maintain it. I tried to use it but it seemed very bloated for my lowly Atom home server. Php and webdav, if i recall correctly. They should have made a native code lightweight sync server separate from the web interface IMO.
      Of course, if you *have* to run a cloud service that you control 100%, OwnCloud is the best solution. I'd mod you up but I already posted in this thread...

  • 20K item limit... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 23, 2014 @01:17PM (#47299397)

    But they still have a 20,000 item limit for the 1TB OneDrive for Business user so you tend to end up hitting the item limit well before the data size limit...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Trepidity ( 597 )

      True, although the average person shouldn't be using that one. OneDrive for Business is, despite the name, not the same product at all, and mostly Enterprise-targeted. It's a rebranded version of Sharepoint, which is more of a full-on content-management/collaboration/etc. platform, rather than a synced drive. I'd guess that's the reason for the item limit also, since it's doing some more heavyweight import/management of each item vs. just storing them.

  • NSA, GCHQ etc. must be running out of disk space. Get a MS to help out!

  • Dropbox does start at 2GB, and this is a severe shortcoming compared to 15GB, but they give free additional storage for just about everything. I've gotten an additional 10GB, in smaller chunks, for:

    • Having .edu address
    • Using photo backup on smartphone
    • Referring other users
    • Reading their tutorial page
    • Installing the application - per device

    Et cetera. It does kind of stink jumping through hoops to get there, but unlike OneDrive (YMMV), Dropbox's syncing program actually works.

    • The problem with Dropbox and the reason I refuse to use it whenever possible is because they're a pyramid data scam. If I share a file with someone (say 10GB of footage from a photo shoot) and they want to accept it, the 10GB I shared with them fills up their entire capacity unless they want to buy more space themselves.

      If I have 1TB of OneDrive footage and I share 1TB of data the other person has 0TB taken up of their own space.

      DropBox seriously needs to drop their double, triple and quadruple + dipping

  • There are lots of cloudstorage providers: Hubic offers even 25 Gb for free. So Microsoft still is not very special with their 15 Gb offer.

  • I bought a Synology NAS and set it up with appropriate file sharing (and the Cloud Station [synology.com] Dropbox-alike). I now have my own personal cloud with several TB of storage, and it's all under my control. Tell me again why I'd want a teensy little OneDrive?

    BTW, I like my Synology but almost any other modern NAS will give you the same features. Pick one you like and free yourself from relying on Microsoft/Google/Dropbox's good graces and government backups.

  • I have 28 GB for free on onedrive

  • OneDrive reuploads a whole file when it's changed, which makes it useless if you want to store an oft-updated TrueCrypt container, or other encrypted container. Dropbox, on the other hand, does delta updates of files. With OneDrive, every time you add/edit/remove files from your encrypted container, it will reupload the whole container. Unless you have a really small one, that's unacceptable.

  • How do they backup such insane amount of data?

    Relying on NSA will not help as they do not provide an API for restoring data

  • I have a server at home with several 40TB of space. When I go someplace for an extended time I use a 2TB USB 3 portable drive. I can connect it to my devices when needed. Why use some place as insecure as the cloud? Why give companies a look into your business, because it is none of their business to be in my business. There is no need for that kind of connectivity, there are plenty of cheaper options that are way more secure.
  • What ever happened to MegaUpload where you get 50Gb - for free!. Just wondering why it's is not mentioned in the article.

  • ...because people have been passing around my referral link on some forum somewhere (all foreign names).
    That would be great if I could use it, and if it wouldn't take me a week to upload all that on my "broadband" cable...

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