Cancelling my Microsoft 365 subscription and unlinking from OneDrive (Help?)

[ToraQ]

So I've been thinking about cancelling my Microsoft 365 subscription after having been subscribed to it for a while due to how tired I am of Microsoft's decision making (Not that I'm switching OSes anyway), as well as the fact that I want to save up money. I also want nothing to do with OneDrive anymore and decide that it's best to store all the files I have elsewhere. However, there are two things that keep me from doing so:

• I only have the subscription so I have enough space for my OneDrive storage. So much of my files on my computer are beyond the freemium 5GB storage limit and I'm too paranoid about deleting off most of them. If I cancelled my subscription now, I'd risk having my OneDrive account frozen within 3 months
• Unlinking OneDrive from my laptop now means I will lose access to almost everything, and deleting that much stuff is already a huge paranoia thing for me.

Does anyone have any advice/suggestions on this? Also, if there are good alternatives to OneDrive, I would like to hear it. Thanks.

[Melooon]

Why do you think you need to delete anything? You can move the files from OneDrive to a local hard drive and call it a day!

Waaayyy back in 2010 I was a big Dropbox user, for many years I kept all my files in Dropbox and I felt it was really important that they be cloud synced in case something happened to my laptop - it did come in handy once or twice but frankly not that often. Dropbox had this annoying habit of putting up their price and adding more storage even though I didn't need more storage though, so I had to quit around 2019.

I did try a few others, I was on MegaSync, OneDrive, Box, IceDrive (i think) - I tried a bunch! Of the non-Dropbox options OneDrive was the best and I used it for a few months until one day it bugged out trying to sync two computers and deleted all my files  That was the end of my business with OneDrive and 360!

ANYWAY, all that is to say; as someone who was all in on the "have all your files in the cloud or else!" ethos, and long ago moved to just having files in my computer - I totally understand how that's a scary step to take; but also its really not such a big deal and you should not stress about it 

It does mean that you need to start thinking about how you backup your files there's a thread dedicated to that; I personally think most houses should have an old computer running as a shared file server anyway since it can be used for backups and self hosting movie streaming etc - so it can become a fun project in itself!

[MediocreMetastasis]

I'm not the best guy who can give info on how to exterminate Onedrive as Onedrive deleted all my documents, stored on my local hard-drive, when I tried to uninstall it. but maybe buy an external drive/usb and transfer all the files to that. I would like to say you can just uninstall it and all your files will be fine but I had such a bad experience with onedrive my advice would be to try and backup all your files before you cancel and remove it.

Google drive is a cloud service that I use. It allows 15gb of data to be store and doesn't inject itself onto your computer.

Another suggestion is to just have a external drive for storage. It's a pretty good option as it would be nearly impossible for both to fail at the exact same time. For external drives I recommend buying a sata-to-usb cable (one that can be powered with a dc cable) and either buying a hard-drive or ripping one out of an old dvd-player or unused computer as it is way cheaper to do that.

[ToraQ]

You can move the files from OneDrive to a local hard drive and call it a day!

The thing is, I have so many images uploaded to OneDrive, and a lot of them tend to be images I have no use for. It would be a huge pain trying to move all of them at once, so I didn't bother with that.

I did try a few others, I was on MegaSync, OneDrive, Box, IceDrive (i think)

I never tried MegaSync, Box, and IceDrive, so how were those? Were there any pros and cons to them?

maybe buy an external drive/usb and transfer all the files to that. I would like to say you can just uninstall it and all your files will be fine but I had such a bad experience with onedrive my advice would be to try and backup all your files before you cancel and remove it.

I do have a few USB drives, but I haven't use those in ages, so I should definitely use them again. I never owned an external hard drive, so that's something I should consider getting (And my Birthday is coming up in a few days so hopefully that'll be a good time to buy one).

[Melooon]

MegaSync, Box, and IceDrive, so how were those? Were there any pros and cons to them?

They were all awkward, buggy or just lacking in basic features IceDrive is still half the price of Dropbox and perhaps its improved, but I remember it feeling like it was half the quality too, despite having a slick website.

With any service, you get what you pay for most of the time; and in every case you get a lot more paying for your own storage hardware rather than paying to rent someone else's storage.

1TB of storage on a cloud service will be 40-120 euro/dollars a year - a 1TB SSD will be about 60-90 euro/dollars, but most of my SSDs and hard drives have lasted me 5-10 years, so while they might cost more upfront they are many times cheaper in the long run - plus there are no privacy issues and no one can mess with your stuff except you

[Tuffy!]

While I second most of what has been said in here before, there are good alternatives to Microsoft Office 365 and Google Docs if you still want to rely on the service of a 3rd party.

Collabora is a widely used variant based on the foundation of LibreOffice Online. You can host it yourself (and retain full ownership of your data) or pay for the hosted variant by signing up with one of their partners.

By doing so, you often get several other applications as a bonus on top like cloud storage space, calendar apps, communication apps, e-mail services etc.

I'm writing an article "How to Degoogle" with a section about replacing MS Office 365 and Google Docs.

It's still work in progress but it might give you some information about the options of getting your own cloud office instance up & running.

[ToraQ]

Collabora is a widely used variant based on the foundation of LibreOffice Online. You can host it yourself (and retain full ownership of your data) or pay for the hosted variant by signing up with one of their partners.

By doing so, you often get several other applications as a bonus on top like cloud storage space, calendar apps, communication apps, e-mail services etc.

I've mainly used Libreoffice and Collabora Office for typing out docs, and honestly I didn't know Collabora also has a cloud storage app. I'll definitely look into it.

[Tuffy!]

As far as I know, Collabora itself doesn't offer cloud storage but depending on who is hosting Collabora for you, cloud file storage might be included. There are several partners that offer cloud storage in addition to hosting Collabora for you. I listed several of those options in my article.

Of course you can as well self-host your own cloud storage & Collabora on the same server. Renting a managed server for cheap is a good option IMHO because you have full control over everything. I will try to release more information about the self-hosting options in my article (or as an additional part of my Big Tec Detox series) sometime soon. Whenever that is   

[lakes]

One alternative I've heard about is NextCloud. They have both a file sync cloud storage service and an office suite.

[Tuffy!]

One alternative I've heard about is NextCloud.

They are making use of / hosting Collabora Office too. I didn't report on them because their website is just awful. Everything seems business related, no information is directed at non-commercial users. They clearly have their focus on corporations. So I found invitation after invitation to sign up for a trial account and hand out my data but not what I was looking for. I'm not saying they're bad (at least they offer to download "their" software for free in the case one wants to self-host the instance).

I just had a very unpleasant stay at their website and got a headache when looking for the info I was after Because of that I missed out on nextcloud this time and wrote myself a note to remind me of revisiting their site and check out their git.


 

[TheFrugalGamer]

I have to say I haven't visited NextCloud's site in ages, so I didn't know the experience was so bad :( But I have been using NextCloud for a long time now and I really love it. I set mine up through Pikapods, which is one of those one-click hosting services that handles the install for you, and offers a wide variety of different apps. I've been super happy with it, and the pricing is really cheap.

Basically I was in the same boat, paying Google for extra Drive storage, but I keep a lot of creative content in there, and didn't like the idea of them mining it for algorithm training, so I switched to NextCloud instead. I've been slowly moving all my content over, and although not all of it's in NextCloud yet, I've found I don't usually miss the few Mb that I left.

[Tuffy!]

I set mine up through Pikapods, which is one of those one-click hosting services that handles the install for you

Their offer is tempting but their entry level option only offers very low hardware specs. For 1,20 you get 0,25 CPU cores, 0,25 GB of Ram and 100 MB of storage. They have a slider on their page for calculating the price BTW. When only considering the price point and hardware specs of a higher tier plan, I could get a much more powerful virtual server from a reliable host for less. But this would lack some of the convenience a service like Pikapods might has to offer.

I think I should give them a chance and try  out their service. I will as well add them to the text that I'm writing. I think a lot of people would prefer the convenience over performance.

Thanks for bringing this up :-)

BTW. What are the specs you have signed up for and that enable you to tun nextcloud?

[TheFrugalGamer]

Their offer is tempting but their entry level option only offers very low hardware specs. For 1,20 you get 0,25 CPU cores, 0,25 GB of Ram and 100 MB of storage. They have a slider on their page for calculating the price BTW. When only considering the price point and hardware specs of a higher tier plan, I could get a much more powerful virtual server from a reliable host for less. But this would lack some of the convenience a service like Pikapods might has to offer.

I think I should give them a chance and try  out their service. I will as well add them to the text that I'm writing. I think a lot of people would prefer the convenience over performance.

Thanks for bringing this up :-)

BTW. What are the specs you have signed up for and that enable you to tun nextcloud?

Oh absolutely, I decided for this particular use I didn't want to deal with the trouble of setting it up, so in this case I am 100% trading money for convenience. I'm okay with that, but for everyone it's different and something they'll need to weigh.

My pod's currently using 1 core/4 GB mem/50 GB of space. I don't really need speed for this one, and opted for more storage over quick processing. Again, your mileage may vary, but it works for my needs!