Column Update: Don’t trust yourself to be your computers’ back-up plan - October 2, 2015

In the column "Don’t trust yourself to be your computers’ back-up plan - October 2, 2015" I suggested one cloud service to backup your computer to could be Microsoft's OneDrive.

That recommendation hasn't changed, but Microsoft did recently make a fundamental change to OneDrive that might make it not the best choice for some.

I wrote then how Microsoft had promoted in October of 2014 that OneDrive was going to be unlimited storage.  

Unfortunately, Microsoft has withdrawn the unlimited storage promise because, well, some people were using it for unlimited storage.  The cited some users storing as much as 70 gigabytes.

Now the most you can buy is one terabyte.  It is included with an Office 365 subscription.  A terabyte should be sufficient for backing up most people's computer.  It is for mine, and for my family members.

What's truly unfortunate, is they also took the option of downgrading their storage plans.  Now they will no longer offer the 100 gigabyte and 200 gigabyte paid tiers. And new users for the free service will only get five gigabytes, not the previous fifteen.

Microsoft has made some positive steps recently by abandoning their Microsoft platform first strategy and actually producing good products for the Android platform.  And they have made a couple of excellent acquisitions recently with products like Sunrise and Wunderlist; two apps I use daily.  This OneDrive announcement is a big step backwards.  As other companies race to add more value to their cloud storage opportunities, Microsoft steps back.

As I mentioned in the column, there is one unlimited storage offering that is truly unlimited; at least unlimited from the get go, and not an add on as was Microsoft's.  

That is Amazon's Cloud Drive.  For $60 a year you get truly unlimited backup.  Some Amazon customers have received offers from Amazon for a free trial year of Amazon Cloud.  Everyone gets at least a 90 day free trial.

And I found it backups files faster use Arq Backup then did OneDrive.