What you can do to prepare for the new storage quota implementation

  1. Check your current storage status: https://drive.google.com/settings/storage
  2. Determine if you need to delete/move content
  3. Use Google Takeout to transfer your Gmail or Drive data to a personal account
  4. Move Drive files you own to a Shared drive
  5. Manage files in your Google Drive storage

What locations and files count toward storage

Gmail - Messages and attachments, such as items in your Spam and Trash folders, take up space.
Google Photos - Photos and videos.
Google Drive - Most files in your My Drive take up space.  My Drive contains files and folders you upload or sync, such as PDFs, images, or videos.  It also contains files you create, such as Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms.

Items in your Trash count towards storage.  After 30 days those items will automatically be permanently deleted.  You can also manually delete items in your Trash.

Orphaned files count toward storage.  These are files that have lost their parent folder.  You can search for these files using an advanced search.  Enter "is:unorganized owner:me" in the search field.

What locations and files don't count against storage

  • Files in "Shared with me" and shared drives don't count as space towards an individual's account.  These files only count for storage space in the owner's Google My Drive.
  • Google Sites.
  • Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Jamboard, and Drawings files you create before June 1, 2021, and don't edit after that date.

Google Drive for Desktop

If you use Drive for Desktop to sync files with your computer, items in Drive for Desktop take up a different amount of space than the same items stored online at drive.google.com.

  • Items in your Trash take up space in Google Drive, but aren't synced to your computer.
  • Shared items will take up space on your computer, but not Google Drive.
  • Items that are in multiple folders will be synced to all folders on your computer, taking up more space.
  • If you only sync some folders to your computer, the storage on your computer will be less than what is shown on Google Drive.
  • Your computer may show a slightly different file size than drive.google.com because of Mac or PC requirements.