Microsoft OneDrive gives you 5GB of online storage for free. Well, most people get 5GB for free. I get a massive 140GB for free and here is how I do it. Boost your OneDrive storage free!
Please note that some of the extra space tips have come from special offers that are no longer available. Some tips are still valid, but a couple do not work. However, new offers may come along and old ones may be revived, so keep an eye out for ways to increase space. If you see any new offers, post them as a comment at the bottom.
Every Windows user should have a Microsoft ID - a username and password used to log in to one of Microsoft’s services like Outlook.com email, OneDrive online storage, Xbox Live, Skype and so on. Even Windows 10 uses the same username and password these days.
This means you have access to 5GB of free online storage. The files and folders on the OneDrive website are identical to the files and folders stored in the OneDrive folder on Windows PCs.
(Windows 7 users have to manually install the app from onedrive.com, but it is built into Windows 10.)
These days 5GB is not a great deal of space and it is easy to fill it with backups of photos, videos, music and documents.
If you are running short of space on OneDrive there is always the option to upgrade to a plan with more space. You can get up to 5TB with the top plan, although working with that amount of online data would be very tedious. It would take some people a month just to upload 5TB of files, even if they had 5TB to upload.
The free 5GB isn’t enough, but the plans are too much, either in space or price. What is the alternative? Just boost your free storage. I currently have 140GB free, which is plenty for my needs. Here’s how I got it.
1 Stick with it
The limit on the mount of online storage was not always 5GB and it has been up and down over the years. I had a Microsoft account when the free space was higher and my current limit is now 15GB.
I have also had a Microsoft account for a very long time. Even before OneDrive existed. So I get a loyalty bonus of another 10GB. My basic free space is therefore 25GB, which if I remember correctly, is what you used to get for free at one time.
There isn’t much a new user can do to earn more free space with this, so you either have it or you don’t. Check how much space you have on OneDrive.
- Log in to OneDrive.com with a browser
- Click the gear icon in the top left corner
- Click Options
- Click Manage storage
This shows the amount of free space, bonuses and extras.
2 Check your phone
Sometimes extras are bundled with mobile phones and once I got 100GB of free space on Dropbox. With my last phone, a Samsung, I got 100GB of free space on OneDrive valid for two years. Update: My Samsung bonus has now expired and I’ve lost the 100GB 🙁
I am not suggesting that you go out and buy a new phone just to get a few more gigabytes of online storage space, but you should definitely check your phone and your OneDrive account to see whether you have more space than you realise. You might have extra space and have not yet claimed it.
If the OneDrive app is on your phone, but you have never used it, fire it up and log in. Your OneDrive storage might be upgraded for free.
Update September 2018: This popped up on my phone a couple of days ago! It seems this offer is still live! Sadly I didn’t get the 100 GB extra storage, probably because I have had the offer before. Still, it shows that offers are not dead. Check the OneDrive app on your phone.
If you are thinking about upgrading your phone, check to see if there are any special offers bundled with it.
Related: Is Microsoft OneDrive Photos catching up to Google Photos?
3 Sync your photos
Even if you didn’t get any extra space bundled with the phone, at one time you could get a space bonus for syncing your photos to OneDrive. Open the app might ask if you want to set up photo uploading, but if not, go to Settings in the app and turn on Camera Upload.
I get an extra 15GB of free storage space for enabling this feature a while back. (Don’t tell Microsoft, but I’ve turned this off and I’ve still got the extra 15GB.)
Sadly, this offer is not currently available, but you never know, Microsoft might run this offer again as a promotion for OneDrive, so keep an eye out for it.
Related: How to access the files on your PC from anywhere using OneDrive
4 Invite others
You can earn extra free space for your account by getting other people to use OneDrive. It might be hard to find people who don’t already have a free account because so many people have Microsoft accounts, but if you know a few who don’t, you can earn 0.5GB for everyone that signs up.
This is an offer that is still running (as of Apr 2018), so take advantage of it! Earn up to 10GB of extra online storage space by getting other people to sign up. Here is my link: Get OneDrive.
- Log in to the OneDrive website
- Click the gear icon
- Select Options
- Click Manage storage
- Click Earn more on the right of Referral Bonus at the bottom
This has several options and at the top is a URL. Paste this anywhere, such as on your blog, in an email, on your car bumper, and so on. There are also share buttons for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Sina Weibo. Click the links to share on social media and repeat this every every week or two.
The maximum number of referral bonuses is 20, which means you can get another 10GB of cloud storage space for free.
5 Empty the Recycle bin
Files that are deleted on the PC are not really deleted and they are moved to the Recycle bin in case you discover you really need them after all and want to recover them.
OneDrive has its own Recycle bin that is separate to the Recycle bin on the Windows desktop and files are moved there when they are deleted. If you never empty the Recycle bin, it will grow and grow. Files in the recycle bin count towards your total space usage. Delete them to recover the space.
Go to OneDrive and click Recycle bin on the left. Click Empty recycle bin at the top and the files are permanently deleted. The space they used is added to the free space in your account.
6 Compress files
If there are seldom used files on OneDrive, save them in a compressed zip file to save space. The space savings depend on the type of file and some can be compressed a lot, but others only a little. Zips are always smaller than the original files and it is just a question of how much space is saved.
How do you zip compress files on OneDrive? Do it on your PC. Open an Explorer window and select the OneDrive folder in the sidebar. Right click any file or folder in the OneDrive folder and select Send to > Compressed (zipped) folder. Delete the original file afterwards.
The OneDrive on the the PC’s disk is synced with your online storage, so the zip gets uploaded automatically.
Related: Is Microsoft OneDrive Photos catching up to Google Photos?
With minimal effort………..buy a new phone….wtf??? This article is not as great as its title suggests!
It was only 1 suggestion from 6. Besides, 1.6 billion phones were sold last year. Bundled apps and offers change, but I’ve had hundreds of GB of free space when trading in an old phone for a new one.
samsung gave me 100gb free with my new galaxy phone.
Thanks for the article.
In point 3 you write ‘open the app’. What app are you referring to? On my mobile or laptop or in onedrive?
Oops, I missed a couple of words. Open the app and it might ask… The OneDrive app that is. I don’t think there is currently an offer of extra space, but you never know, offers come and go.
Not one of those options works for me. It looks like they have a gun to my head and I have to pay $99 a year to upgrade. Any new ideas since you posted this? What if I just delete the largest files? Will they just reinstall in the next sync?
Offers come and go and they used to be more common than they are now. I took advantage of several when they came along, but I don’t think there are any current ones. Finding and deleting the largest files will help, but remember to empty the recycle bin on OneDrive to really delete them. Increasing OneDrive storage to 50GB is $1.99 a month ($24 a year) and Microsoft Office + 1TB of OneDrive is $69.99 a year.
With subscribtion to Microsoft Office 365, someone can get 5TB storage in Onedrive. That’s alot.
Following the link from within the Storage settings in Onedrive, I was offered 2 year 100GB storage for free, in return for installation and activation of Outlook on my new Samsung phone - so… still works!
It did for me.
Great tip!!
Thanx.
Just tried this with the Samsung phone and it worked! I now have an extra 100GB.
Thanks!