I'm trying to make sense of two pieces of guidance from Microsoft regarding OneDrive data retention, which seem to conflict:
1. The SharePoint admin center allows me to set the OneDrive retention for deleted users anywhere from 30 to 3650 days. This indicates that when a user is deleted, their OneDrive data is preserved for the set number of days before being permanently erased.
2. However, starting January 27, 2025, there will be a 93-day policy enforced for unlicensed OneDrive accounts. After 93 days, data will go to the recycle bin or archive, and recovering it will incur costs ($0.60/GB one-time + $0.05/GB monthly).
I'm confused because:
- If I set retention to 3650 days, does that only kick in when a user is deleted?
- If we disable a user but just remove their license, does the new policy override my retention setting?
- At what point does it start costing to access archived data instead of just being retained?
Has anyone got clear guidance from Microsoft about how these two rules actually interact?
1 Answer
From what I understand, retention applies only to accounts that have been deleted. If a OneDrive account is unmonitored or disabled, that’s when the billing begins after the 93 days. Deleted accounts don’t incur any charges, so it’s crucial to delete the account if you want to avoid extra costs.
So basically, we could set the retention policy to 10 years, delete the user account when they leave, and still have access to that OneDrive without incurring charges, right?