Consumer OneDrive

OneDrive is Microsoft’s public hosted storage and synchronization technology targeting consumers. Despite its consumer focus, OneDrive is integrated with some Microsoft products sold to businesses, including Windows 8.1, Windows 10, and the Office desktop suite. Consumer OneDrive technology enables users to synchronize folders and their included files from one or more Windows or Mac computers with the Microsoft-hosted OneDrive storage service. As files are added or changed in the user’s local OneDrive folder, they are automatically synchronized to the OneDrive service when Internet connectivity is available, and then to the user’s other OneDrive-connected devices.

Despite similarities in document synchronization and sharing capabilities, there are some fundamental differences between consumer OneDrive and OneDrive for Business.

Advantages of OneDrive. The OneDrive consumer service has several technical advantages over OneDrive for Business. It has clients for more platforms, enables more selective synchronization, supports larger files (up to 10GB rather than 2GB), and offers better reliability and performance. Microsoft is previewing a series of unified OneDrive client applications, based on consumer OneDrive technology, that work with both consumer OneDrive and OneDrive for Business services and close many of the technology gaps. Consumer OneDrive formerly offered unlimited storage to some customers, but this has been discontinued. It is not currently clear what bearing this will have on the promised, but not yet delivered, unlimited storage for OneDrive for Business.