Not completely. No, it’s about Windows 7, 8.0 and 8.1.
Now Microsoft itself is being overtaken by their own marketing. For years they only talked about OneDrive, many users don’t know the difference, and now they want to restrict something that never existed from a marketing point of view. One wants to restrict OneDrive Personal and align Ondrive for Business with the support times of the underlying operating systems. While one is supplied since the beginning of the week several times from the Admin Center of Microsoft365 with messages about OneDrive for Business, both scenarios were summarized in the official OneDrive blog. Which, however, raises more questions than it brings answers. Because for that you have to know what the affected operating systems contained.

Windows 7.8.0

OneDrive Personal (identified by the gray cloud in the notification bar) and OneDrive for Business (identified by the blue cloud) could be installed later.

Windows 8.1

With Windows 8.1, the operating system contained the predecessor of today’s sync client called SkyDrive. This was directly anchored in the operating system. However, only the personal version could be synchronized with it. The OneDrive client, which had to be installed later, was only responsible for synchronizing the business version.

Discontinuations

So after pointing out the differences we come to the discontinuations, which vary widely. I’ll stick to the original OneDrive product group blog post.

OneDrive Personal

For OneDrive Personal, also known as OneDrive Consumer, support will be discontinued as of 01/01/2022. From 01.03.2022 the synchronization will be discontinued.

The regulation around discontinuation of support and discontinuation of synchronization only applies to OneDrive Personal (OneDrive Consumer). A special case is Windows 8.1. While OneDrive for Business could be installed for this operating system, the OneDrive Personal component was included in the operating system. It had the name SkyDrive.exe. However, after checking with Microsoft, they conveyed to me that this also applies to this synchronization.

So for OneDrive Personal, this applies to the following products:

• OneDrive Basic 5 GB (free)
• OneDrive Standalone 100 GB
• Microsoft 365 Single
• Microsoft 365 Family

So the question here is what happens to the purchased products. I have not checked if these (OneDrive Standalone, Microsoft 365 Single and Microsoft 365 Family) are installable on Windows 7, 8, 8.1 at all.

OneDrive for Business

For OneDrive for Business, Microsoft aligns support cycles with the respective operating systems. This means:

Users running Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 will be supported until January 2023.
Users running Windows 8 have already not received support since 12.1.2016.

When you run the OneDrive synchronization app under:

Windows 8.1, you will no longer receive feature updates, but only security fixes until January 10, 2023.

Windows 7 and participate in the Extended Security Update (ESU) program, you will continue to receive critical and important security updates (as defined by the Microsoft Security Response Center) until January 10, 2023.
For Windows 8, you will no longer receive updates or fixes because Windows 8 is no longer supported.

Note: Extended security updates do not include new features, customer-requested non-security updates, or design changes.

For OneDrive Personal, this applies to the following products:

• OneDrive Basic 5 GB (free)
• OneDrive Standalone 100 GB
• Microsoft 365 Single
• Microsoft 365 Family

the following plans include OneDrive for Business and are therefore not affected:

• OneDrive for Business (Plan 1)
• OneDrive for Business (Plan 2)
• Microsoft 365 Business Basic
• Microsoft 365 Business Standard
• Microsoft 365 Business Premium
• Microsoft 365 Apps for Business
• Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise
• Office 365 E1
• Office 365 E3
• Office 365 E5
• Microsoft 365 E3
• Microsoft 365 E5
• Microsoft 365 F3
• Office 365 A1
• Office 365 A3
• Office 365 A5

Summarize

Aligning the business products with the support cycles makes sense. Starting with Windows 10, the operating system includes the sync engine and only has to be activated.

In order to align the end of support for the consumer version, Microsoft has to technically restrict the synchronization. However, there are still users who work with Windows 7, 8 or 8.1 and use OneDrive/SkyDrive and do not want to miss it. So these now have to switch to Windows 10 or Windows 11, which requires new hardware. Normally, the deadlines are planned longer. For me, the question is whether the Microsoft marketing department has dictated the deadlines here again. That, of course, makes the PC manufacturers happy. And yes, Black-Friday and Christmas are just around the corner.