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The original was posted on /r/microsoft by /u/WePrezidentNow on 2023-09-10 20:42:13.
tl;dr even though microsoft will not store your photo twice if you add it to an album, they will charge you twice. the below email interaction includes the details. is it fraud? idk, not a lawyer. is it scummy? yes.
A couple of weeks ago I got the following email:
Microsoft is committed to improving your Microsoft 365 experience, and we want to let you know about an upcoming change to the OneDrive photos storage infrastructure. Soon, data from photos saved in your Gallery and in your albums will each count separately against your total Microsoft storage quota. This change will gradually roll out across accounts starting on October 16, 2023.
This change may affect how much storage you have available. If you are over your storage limit, you will not be able to save new files to OneDrive, sync files to OneDrive, and send or receive emails in Outlook.com. To help you avoid such interruption, we are granting you a one-time storage bonus that will take effect when the data change is applied to your account. This storage bonus is free of charge and will expire one year after the date of issue. Once your storage bonus has been applied, you can view the quantity and expiration date in your OneDrive manage storage.
This email was admittedly very vaguely worded, so I followed up with Microsoft:
Hello, i received an email stating that photos stored in the gallery and albums would be counted twice for storage. Am I right in thinking this makes no sense? The photos are stored in a folder… once. A json file describing what photos belong in an album should be like 3kb max. I guess I have two questions 1) are photos in albums being stored a second time? 2) when discussing that it will use separate storage, does this mean that it will use double the storage (aka the photos size x2)? This feels like either a blatant cash grab or a terribly worded email, which is why I’m asking for clarification. If my worst fears are true this is either a terrible architecture decision (by needlessly storing a photo twice) or outright fraud (claiming to customers that this is using 2x storage without actually doing so). Please let me know if I have understood something wrong! Thanks, WePrezidentNow
Response:
Hello WePrezidentNow,
Let me explain you about the new changes of OneDrive photos storage. OneDrive photo storage has some new changes that affect how photos are stored and edited. Starting on October 16, 2023, data from photos saved in your Gallery and in your albums will each count separately against your total Microsoft storage quota. This may reduce the amount of storage you have available. OneDrive also added some photo editing features, such as crop, rotate, and light and color adjustments, for JPEG or PNG files on personal account.
For example, if your "gallery" location is "My Files > Pictures > Camera Roll" and you add a photo from there to an "album," when you view the photo in an album and check the "info" properties, the photo location is still the same: My Files > Pictures > Camera Roll. As such, there should be no reason to multi-count photos from both the "gallery" and the "album" when Microsoft has only ever been hosting one single copy of it on OneDrive.
If you want to check how it works: Delete a photo from the "gallery," and it gets deleted from any "album" to which it had been added, too. Same as if you Delete a photo from an "album," and it gets deleted not only from the "gallery" but also from any other "album" to which it was added, too. That mean there is only actually one single copy of a photo, regardless of how many albums might include it.
Ok, so it seems as though one thing is clear. Microsoft does not store the photo twice. Do they count it twice? That wasn't clear so I clarified.
So as I understand it now, there is a single photo which is say 3mb. It is a part of the gallery. Then you add the photo to an album and a small amount of metadata is added so it ends up taking 3mb + maybe a kb more. Is that correct or would it take up 6mb?
Here was the response after some escalation:
We have reviewed the case with a higher team and we can confirm that if you add a 3 MB photo to an album, it will consume double the amount of storage in your account, which is 6 MB.
This feels like some bullshit cash-grab because no architect worth their salt (much less one working at Microsoft) is going to double store a photo for what is essentially just some metadata used to package something for an end user. I would say it sounds like fraud, but I am not a lawyer so I can't really say.
Just an FYI for everyone. I would probably just stay away from OneDrive's albums or even OneDrive for photos in general. Feel bad for all the people who are suddenly going to find out they are out of storage and potentially lose valuable photos. Maybe if enough people complain and point out how stupid this is they'll roll it back, but I doubt it.