
Massive increase to Onedrive storage plans - ghshephard
https://blog.onedrive.com/new-onedrive-storage-plans/
======
pling
Nope.

I uploaded a legit Office ISO I downloaded from MSDN to SkyDrive (as it was
called back then) to test throughput up and down.

After 3-4 hours it was gone.

My data isn't going near it.

Edit: just to clarify... I think they hash incoming files and delete known
ones as part of a takedown system. This was an ISO that had been shared on TPB
as well as MSDN. Of course their policy allows these measures but I'm not
happy putting something up there on the basis that they can arbitrarily delete
it.

~~~
m0dest
Hey pling, I work on the OneDrive team. We definitely don't do the type of
content scanning that you're describing. I wouldn't be comfortable with that.
The only time we currently use file hashes for automated takedown is when
known child pornography is re-uploaded to the service after being reported.

For copyrighted content, we have to respond to DMCA notices like other
services. Sharing content to the public and getting reported by a third party
is the only path for that. And in those cases, you definitely get a specific
notice about the takedown. The web UI would also show you exactly which file
was affected, and prevent you from sharing it again. It doesn't just delete
files. (That would be unacceptable.)

Note that there's currently a 2 GB file size limit. It seems like the most
likely explanation is that you put a large ISO in your SkyDrive folder, and it
never succeeded in uploading because it exceeded the limit.

~~~
megaman821
Will the file size limit ever be upped? I got dozens of movies, ISOs, and
database backups that OneDrive can't sync.

~~~
timothya
They really need to increase the maximum file size to be competitive. As a
comparison, Dropbox files can be up to 10 GB each[0], and Google Drive files
can be up to 1 TB each[1].

[0]: [https://www.dropbox.com/help/5/en](https://www.dropbox.com/help/5/en)

[1]:
[https://support.google.com/drive/answer/37603?hl=en](https://support.google.com/drive/answer/37603?hl=en)

~~~
natdempk
Its disingenuous to say that Dropbox has a file size limit of 10GB, when the
first thing written on that page you cited says otherwise... The 10GB limit
only applies to files uploaded through the __web __interface. Files uploaded
through the OS /mobile client have no file size restriction. [0]

[0]: [https://www.dropbox.com/help/5/en](https://www.dropbox.com/help/5/en)

~~~
timothya
Good catch. I skimmed that page quickly and saw 10 GB and didn't look closer.
Sorry for the confusion.

------
hemancuso
Shameless plug for my product, ExpanDrive. Version 4 came out a week and a
half ago and adds support for OneDrive along with a ton of other cloud storage
providers.

[http://www.expandrive.com/expandrive](http://www.expandrive.com/expandrive)

Right now the best Cloud-storage desktop clients: Dropbox/Google
Drive/Box/Copy/OneDrive, all do sync of the entire repository (unless you're
willing to do the work of selective sync). Apart from that you're not left
with many options, other than the web, for moving data to and from your giant
1TB account. ExpanDrive bridges that gap by providing access as a network
drive. You connect and interact with the data without needing to bring it all
in. We keep a big local cache, and do writes in the background so your saves
feel instant, like Dropbox. If you've not checked out the software recently,
take another look.

~~~
localhost
OneDrive in Windows 8.1 is built into the OS - it shows up as a folder in
Explorer. After reading your site, I'm still confused; how is ExpanDrive
different / better than the OneDrive OS integration? Can you describe a
scenario where ExpanDrive is superior to OneDrive + Windows 8.1? Also, once
you've done that here, it would be great to add that to your advertising copy
on your site - perhaps with a walk-through of the product to show how it's
better than the built-in OS support :)

~~~
cdh
A major frustration for me is that OneDrive does _not_ show up as a folder in
Windows 8.1, unless you link your Windows account with a Microsoft account. I
absolutely won't be logging into my computers with my Microsoft account, which
has made OneDrive much more difficult to use. It works well from Office, but
nothing else. I've tried installing the old version of the client, and it
fails with an error that I already have a newer version.

It sounds like ExpanDrive would probably solve this issue for me. (At least
until Microsoft hopefully adds back support for using OneDrive with local
accounts at some point.)

------
boh
Too bad Onedrive is known for altering files, scanning your photos for nudity
(or partial nudity) and deleting/restricting content it deems "questionable".
Otherwise it might seem like a good deal.

~~~
m0dest
Altering text files is sometimes an issue in OneDrive for Business, which is a
totally separate service based on SharePoint. Consumer OneDrive never alters
your text or binary data.

Photos are only scanned for nudity if they're broadly shared. The definition
of "broadly" is changing. It's designed so that content isn't scanned if it's
unshared or if it's only shared with a small number of people. The goal is
just to make sure that people aren't using the service to host massive public
porn collections.

~~~
0x0
Why call both products OneDrive then? The only thing I care to remember from
the discussion earlier is "OneDrive == data files are modified" aka stay the
heck away. By sharing the name, surely you want us to think it is the same
product?

Would you trust a sync service called "File Destroyer for Consumers"?

------
dy
I'm currently using Dropbox and sync all my coding folders (mostly
Rails/Node.js/Go/C#). I'd be willing to switch if one of the other providers
would have smarter folder exclusion (something like .gitignore or I would even
take having to make a sentinel file like .nosync in every folder).

I'd like to exclude things like node_modules, build folders etc. It's gotten
to a point where I have to disable Dropbox during development and let it catch
up later otherwise it chokes up CPU at 100% doing it's hashing.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

~~~
nextweek2
Best advice I can give is don't do that. Dropbox is not a good version control
system. You'll get burned at some point.

Use git with one of the free providers like github or bitbucket. You will find
it so much easier.

~~~
benologist
Dropbox does realtime, automatic backup of your work with file version history
in case you accidentally deleted or overwrote something. Git solves other
problems.

~~~
nextweek2
Dropbox does those things, however when you are programming you are generally
not working in a single file. You are working across many files with many
various temporary files.

This complicates the state of a development folder. If Dropbox went down mid
upload or you hibernated your computer before it had completely uploaded (it
happens), you then work on another computer and that uploads some files,
suddenly you are going to get a merge conflict which Dropbox cannot easily
help you with.

Software development is not one file being edited, its a collection of files
in a particular state that give it meaning. Dropbox is good, its gotten better
but its still not the right tool for the job.

Git (or any DVCS) is good enough that you can commit and push every 5mins if
you wanted. The point is that the state a a whole makes sense.

Plus what about when you start working with other developers, you cannot all
work in Dropbox, you'll get merge conflicts every day. What about bug finding
features like bisect? Or just having a log of when thing happened?

------
ghshephard
The new monthly prices will be $1.99 for 100 GB (previously $7.49) and $3.99
for 200 GB (previously $11.49).

You've got to love competition, but I wonder at what point Onedrive's race to
the bottom in terms of pricing starts to impact Dropbox's valuation?

Other interesting pricing tidbits:

OneDrive will come with 15 GB for free (up from 7 GB). Office 365 Personal
($7/month) will come with 1 TB of OneDrive storage.

For the first time I'm rethinking my $8.25/month subscription to Dropbox for
100 GB, particularly as I only have about 10 GB of data...

~~~
mchusma
Agreed. My wife had to upgrade her dropbox plan recently to the $41.60/mo
500GB plan. I had to really weigh the pros and cons of switching. In the end,
I decided the costs of me having to provide "technical support" to my wife was
worth the roughly $30/mo in the short term over Google Drive (and now
OneDrive), but figured we would start trying to convert her over the next year
or so.

Dropbox is in a really tough spot, because if they even cut their prices in
half (which would still be significantly more expensive than OneDrive), their
revenue would drop tremendously right before an IPO. My guess is that the
primary options are to stay the course, go public ASAP, hope you don't get
bled too much from Google/Microsoft and try to find more reasons for people to
pay a premium for Dropbox, or to sell to Apple, which is the only big player
without a meaningful competitor.

~~~
clarky07
>or to sell to Apple, which is the only big player without a meaningful
competitor.

iCloud Drive?[1]. The Apple buying Dropbox ship has sailed. Steve Jobs tried
to buy them and Dropbox said no. Turns out it was a good choice on their part,
but there is pretty much no chance of it happening now.

[1]- [http://www.apple.com/ios/ios8/icloud-drive/?cid=wwa-us-
kwg-f...](http://www.apple.com/ios/ios8/icloud-drive/?cid=wwa-us-kwg-features-
com)

------
DevX101
Unfortunately for DropBox, Google and Microsoft can almost give away storage
for free as loss leaders for their other products. Hard drive space is a
commodity.

I was a bit late to the online storage game and at $2 per month for 100GB,
signing for Google Drive was a no brainer over DropBox.

~~~
danieldk
Getting 50GB for two years with my phone (Moto X) makes Dropbox look pale in
comparison. And they still don't have something akin to Google Docs or Office
Online. Space is indeed a commodity. Office, Play, Google Apps, Ads, etc. are
the money makers.

------
mkal_tsr
Does it come with improved "sharing" abilities as well?
[http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2344633/leaked-nsa-
docum...](http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2344633/leaked-nsa-document-
shows-microsoft-co-operation-over-prism)

------
madoublet
If the Skydrive team is listening, I love the All Photos feed, but can we get
something like that for non-photos? I would like to see everything else that
has been synced recently. I am not sure what Recent Docs does, but it is
definitely not what I expect.

------
baudehlo
I wish they would fix their API along with these improvements. Currently
there's no way to upload a file to OneDrive without knowing the file size.
Google and DropBox support that with their APIs (via slightly different forms
of chunked uploads).

This is relevant to me for [http://emailitin.com/](http://emailitin.com/)
because with email attachments there's no content-length. Since I don't want
to store attachments on my end (even temporarily) I'd rather just pipe them
directly to OneDrive (as I do with GDrive and DropBox). With the current API
limitation I have to pipe to a temporary file, stat the file, and then upload.
Really annoying.

~~~
hemancuso
It's a multipart upload. You don't need to know the content-length.

~~~
baudehlo
Maybe they added that feature recently. I'll look into it.

------
lstamour
Accuracy note: SkyDrive launched with 25 GB free, then reduced that to 7 GB
unless you knew to click a link to be "grandfathered". So now they're at a
fashionable 15 GB free. Good, but not as good as it once was ;-)

Either way, paying for the 100GB if you need the storage is a no-brainer. And
OneDrive is still one of the few truly cross-platform storage services that's
also ships natively with an OS. Now that Apple's offering additional cloud
options on iPad, I could see myself picking one cloud provider and sticking
with it ....

------
cabbeer
I won't consider skydrive until they fix this issue:
[http://answers.microsoft.com/en-
us/onedrive/forum/sdfiles/sk...](http://answers.microsoft.com/en-
us/onedrive/forum/sdfiles/skydrive-windows-81-how-do-i-stop-an-
upload/07175d79-4b10-44db-8800-823d808d80c5)

------
RexRollman
I really like where the online storage space is going but why don't they offer
support for standard transfer protocols? Things like ftp, sftp, rsync, etc. I
don't want to install a custom client and uploading via a web browser is
tedious.

------
tgeorge
Just go build one for yourself. >.>
[https://owncloud.org/](https://owncloud.org/)

~~~
Dylan16807
Call me back when it can sync more than one file per second.

~~~
hnha
Try seafile, it is very perfomant for me.

------
owenversteeg
Aww :( I have two grandfathered 25gb free accounts and I was hoping they'd get
more storage.

------
josefresco
Question, does OneDrive handle large amounts of files/data? Google's Windows
software has issues due to it's 32bit/memory limiting nature which makes it
almost unusable for me for backing up client files.

Can anyone with OneDrive exp chime in?

~~~
nextweek2
Have you tried Insync which is a cross platform gdrive alternative. I believe
its using python, so it might not suffer from 32bit issues.

------
matdrewin
If they fix their synching issues, I'm in.

