Microsoft’s New Windows Warning—Pay $20 To Save All Your Data

You have been warned, and warned, and warned….

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Microsoft is on a mission to sell you more Microsoft. That’s why you get Copilot when you ask for Gemini or ChatGPT. That’s why you get Edge when you ask for Chrome. That’s why you get Bing when you ask for Google. And that’s why it’s now pushing a backup solution that means you would likely need to pay.

Windows Latest warns Microsoft’s “nagging won’t stop.” The Start menu now “shows banners for OneDrive with an alert icon that says you need to back up everything to the cloud. In case you don’t have Microsoft 365, you’ll be asked to pay for the subscription.”

That will cost you $20 per year for a home user or $60 for a business user, assuming (like everyone these days) you have more than 5GB of data. The warning tells users “we want to ensure that you always have access to your files, apps, settings and passwords by backing them up to the cloud.” Not just any cloud — Microsoft’s cloud.

If you click on “continue,” you’ll be directed to a OneDrive backup setup. “It doesn’t matter how you see things,” Windows Latest says, “this is an upsell. Microsoft wants you to use their cloud backup (like OneDrive). It’s using a warning-style message to make it seem urgent, but it’s mostly to get you to subscribe or use their service.”

As with Copilot, Bing, Edge and OneDrive, there is an element of user frustration with ads stitched into the OS. “Do we really need this constant nagging?” Windows Latest says. “I love Windows, I pay for Microsoft 365 and use OneDrive all the time, but I have certain use cases, and I may not want to back up all personal files, such as screenshots or camera snaps, to the cloud, especially when I have multiple Windows 11 PCs.”

These nags appear sporadically and can’t be stopped. “Unless your PC is constantly syncing data to OneDrive, the alert will continue to appear.” Ouch.

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This is a Windows 11 issue for now, albeit the company is also pushing its 700 million Windows 10 users to make the switch to give their PCs and their data an added security boost. If you don’t want to make that move and intend to take Microsoft’s 12-month extended Windows 10 support instead, you’ll need to log into your account. This is another new push that’s caused some consternation amongst the user base.

The good news is that a paid $30 support option now covers 10 PCs on a single account. Although it’s uncertain which type of multi-PC owning user that largesse is directed at.