Microsoft just made a major change to its storage policy affecting Microsoft 365 subscribers with shared accounts. According to the company, the Microsoft 365 Family, Premium, and Pro plans will move from an assigned 1TB of cloud storage for each user to a shared 2TB for all users. This means that a subscription shared across six users will have its total cloud storage capacity slashed by 66.6%. This change will take effect on subscription renewals after May 2, 2027, unless the subscribers change their plan earlier. Some affected subscribers might also receive bonus storage when their account switches to the share limit model, although the company did not mention its eligibility requirements.

The company said it made this change so that the cloud storage allocation for Microsoft 365 subscribers will automatically go where it’s needed, and that individual users are less likely to hit individual storage limits. Aside from that, it also said that unused storage can benefit the entire family, and that any additional storage that the main subscriber purchases will benefit everyone.

This new setup is indeed advantageous for subscribers who only have one power user that uses up the majority of the cloud storage capacity, while all the rest take up a fraction. It would also be cheaper for an individual who intends to use more than 1TB of cloud storage to just switch to the Microsoft 365 Family plan (which costs $129.99 annually) instead of getting the Microsoft 365 Personal plan ($99.99 annually) and paying an extra $9.99 per month or $119.88 per year to bring their total cloud storage capacity to 2TB. However, if you have four users under one account using 500GB each, you will be forced to purchase additional capacity, starting at $1.99 per month for 200GB.

While Microsoft hasn’t increased the prices of its subscription, this move simultaneously reduces the burden on its storage servers while forcing accounts with multiple large users to purchase storage separately. This seems like a reaction to the storage shortage hitting the industry, with hard drive prices surging by 46% from September 2025 to January 2026. Enterprise SSDs have been hit hard, too, with 30TB drives now costing $22,600 while supply remains sold out until 2027.

Affected users could change their cloud storage providers, but even Google has been affected, with the company cutting the free cloud storage limit from 15GB to 5GB pending extra security measures. Even Backblaze, which offers “unlimited” backups, updated its terms of service to potentially throttle or terminate accounts that exceed “typical usage patterns” or “places an undue burden.” Users who have grown tired of paying monthly to secure their data could alternatively set up a NAS and populate it with the best hard drives — although this might be pricey in the short term and requires some setup, it could potentially save you hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in the long run.

There’s light at the end of the tunnel for Nine PBS. We reported last week that the station lost access to 50TB of data representing 70 years of TV history. The issue was that its cloud storage provider went out of business and access to this important set of backups was abruptly cut off. In the meantime, a judge has cleared the way for Nine PBS to retrieve its archival data and programming from Iron Mountain Data Centers.

Let us refresh your memories of this case by sketching out a timeline of how we got here, before discussing the latest ruling.

• 2019: Nine PBS began using Open Source Storage (OSS) as its cloud storage provider.
• 2019-2025: Annual cloud storage contract renewals occur without incident.
• February 2026: Nine PBS wanted to meet with OSS about contract renewal but couldn’t get in touch.
• March 6, 2026: Without any new agreement inked, the existing contract expired on March 6, with the terms allowing 30 days for the customer to retrieve their data. However, OSS seemed to cut off access to Nine PBS cloud data without any warning or any grace period.
• March 13, 2026: Nine PBS learned that OSS saved its cloud data at physical servers housed in Iron Mountain, Colorado. So it wrote to request that Iron Mountain preserve and return the data. However, Iron Mountain doesn’t confirm or deny that it holds this data.
• April 16, 2026: Nine PBS filed suit against OSS, and new OSS owner James Tramel confirms the data is secured at Iron Mountain.
• May 2026: Tramel stops responding, later claiming he was defrauded into buying OSS.
• June 2026: Nine PBS obtains a default judgment stating it owns the data in question and has the right to possess it. Later the same month, Iron Mountain admits it possesses the data. However, Iron Mountain decides to block any access as it says OSS owns the physical servers.
• July 28, 2026: Nine PBS files a lawsuit against Iron Mountain, the data center provider for OSS, seeking protection against data deletion or modification.

Nine PBS - "70 years of our organization’s history" in danger

The latest development in this twisting and turning case of Nine PBS’s lost data seems like good news for the station. On August 12, 2026, a Denver judge established a process that would allow Nine PBS to retrieve its 50TB of archival data from Iron Mountain’s Denver data center.

The outlined framework includes appointing a third-party vendor, such as a former OSS employee, to assist in the retrieval of the data from the hardware in Iron Mountain. This must be done within 30 days. Moreover, Nine PBS must pay the current and overdue storage fees that OSS missed, and any physical devices the third party takes off the premises must be returned to Iron Mountain after data retrieval. Lastly, Nine PBS must verify no other ex-OSS client data is accessed, and indemnify Iron Mountain against any corruption of data owned by others.

Both Nine PBS and Iron Mountain are requested to provide progress updates on the data retrieval process by September 14. Hopefully this will be a lesson learned by Nine PBS, and it will swiftly implement a proper 3-2-1 backup of its irreplaceable data, so any cloud provider error doesn’t cause such a calamity in the future.

Nine PBS is afraid that it will lose over 70 years of archival materials and programming after its contracted cloud storage vendor has apparently gone out of business. According to Current, the channel used Open Source Storage, or OSS, for storing over 50TB of data — but it suddenly lost access to its data earlier this year. Nine PBS has been working with OSS and its predecessor since 2019 and intended to renew its contract on March 6 of this year. The company never responded and abruptly cut off the station’s data access even though it still had 30 days to retrieve its data after the contract ended.

The station dug a little bit deeper when it discovered that the OSS website no longer existed and was listed as delinquent under the Colorado Secretary of State. It also discovered that OSS utilized Iron Mountain’s services, so it sent a demand letter to the latter to preserve its data and to "pay any reasonable costs associated with its demand." At the time, Iron Mountain did not confirm or deny that it possessed Nine PBS’ data.

At the same time, the channel also sued OSS and its leadership, which it paused after someone who claimed to be a "managing partner of the group that officially acquired" the company reached out. The person, named James Tramel, initially communicated with Nine PBS for about a month. However, this also ended abruptly, with the channel eventually receiving an automated reply from Tramel stating he is no longer connected with OSS. The channel was able to get in touch with him, and he said that he had "been defrauded" into acquiring the cloud storage company and that ownership and operations have now reverted to the previous owners.

This left the channel at a loss, so it continued its case against OSS, and the court ruled that Nine PBS had all the rights to access its data stored with OSS and that the latter should "facilitate its transfer to a new vendor." The channel’s attorney also reached out to Iron Mountain to inform the company of the pending case in Colorado; Iron Mountain finally admitted to holding the data. Iron Mountain initially agreed to turn over Nine PBS’ data, but it eventually backtracked and claimed that OSS owned the data it stored. Because of this, Nine PBS now has no choice but to sue Iron Mountain, too, to ensure the data is not deleted.

The entire thing is a nightmare scenario for Nine PBS, especially as it’s still unclear what will happen to its data. The channel can only assume that its former cloud storage provider is no longer paying data center bills, so it’s rightfully concerned that its data might end up lost forever. And even if Iron Mountain is willing to give Nine PBS its data, it risks getting sued by OSS — it is simply protecting itself by refusing to turn over the said stored data.

It seems that the safest legal way to resolve this issue is for Nine PBS to get a court order requiring Iron Mountain to turn over its data. But the channel must act quickly to ensure that its data, which Nine PBS VP and CCO Leah Freeman said to Current represented "70 years of our organization’s history," stays safe.

It's not clear if the channel has backups of its data, but based on its determination, we suspect not. This is strange, though, especially for a major organization, as one can easily purchase a six-bay NAS on Amazon and populate it with the best HDDs. This also goes against the 3-2-1 backup rule, which says you should keep three copies of your files stored in two different mediums, with one of them running offsite. Hopefully Nine PBS will implement a better backup system once it regains access to its data. And at least there's still a chance — it's not like the fire that the South Korean government experienced last year, which saw 858TB of data go up in smoke.