More cloud storage comes at a price. The free version of OneDrive gives you 5GB of storage space for your backups. However, this space isn’t much—it’s quickly used up if you back up all your files as Microsoft would apparently like.
For a nominal fee per month, you can expand that to 100GB of storage space, which is far more reasonable for backups. And if you have a lot of data? You can get 1TB of space for a higher monthly fee. (All plans have discounted pricing if you pay annually rather than monthly.)
Microsoft's Push for OneDrive
It’s obvious that Microsoft is pushing users to OneDrive by the fact that this cloud backup notification about supposedly necessary backups can’t be disabled. The only way to make it go away is to use it. Sure, you can click the notification and dismiss it for a time… but it will show up again soon enough. This isn’t the first time Microsoft has annoyed users with ads and reminders, and it won’t be the last.
Windows Backup Isn’t Bad, But…
Generally speaking, it’s not a bad idea to back up your most important data with Windows Backup. However, you don’t have to use Microsoft’s OneDrive for your Windows system. There are also plenty of free backup software options that can back up your files offline without needing cloud storage. Check out our favorite picks for Windows backup software to learn more.
This article originally appeared on our sister publication PC-WELT and was translated and localized from German.
