Google Storage FAQ

All newly created accounts on or after January 23, 2023 will be given a 150 GB quota. Also on January 22, 2023 existing accounts will have higher “containment” quotas applied to provide ample time for their content to be assessed while maintaining day to day operations. These quotas are simply to contain the growth of our Google storage usage on campus. We will be implementing lower quotas later in the project. At that time, existing accounts will have quotas of at least 150 GB. We are still determining the final quota.

We will be implementing the containment quotas on January 23, 2023. These quotas should have no impact on day to day operations. We expect to lower some of those quotas in the fall semester of 2023 to at least 150 GB, final number to be determined.

The quota applies to Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos.

Be sure you are logged into your UCSB Connect Google account, and not a personal Google account. To be sure, you can use a private or incognito browsing window.

All accounts will be placed into a containment quota group on January 23, 2023, but the quotas will give you ample room to continue to work normally and therefore should have no real impact on your usage.
As we continue to develop the quotas, if you are directly impacted we will contact you.

We always make absolutely every effort to communicate when content is at risk of deletion. Sometimes content can be automatically deleted as part of the account lifecycle, where we deactivate and then delete accounts that were used by people no longer affiliated with the university. If you are over quota, we have no plans to delete your content on your behalf.

The Google quotas and service changes will apply to all Connect Google account holders at UCSB, including students, faculty, staff, and functional accounts; however, only a very small number of people will need to take any action.

If you are over quota, some services such as creating a new Google Doc may cease to function, however Gmail will continue to send and receive email normally.

In Gmail, when you attach something to an email, if that item is below 25 MB it stays in Gmail and applies to the Gmail portion of your overall usage. Larger attachments are saved in Google Drive and apply to the Drive portion of your overall usage. In both cases, the usage contributes to your overall quota.

If you’d like us to present the details of the project to your department, Please contact the Connect team

The vast majority of the community will not need to take any action at all! However, If you would like to prepare for lower quotas that will be implemented later in the project, you can review your existing content in Google Drive, Google Photos, and Gmail and delete anything you are comfortable with deleting, especially backups of backups, archives, and extremely out of date records/emails. This is just a recommendation; you are responsible for determining what content you are willing to delete.

You will not be able to create new documents or do any activity that adds to your storage consumption.

  • You can remove content so that you are below your quota your account will go back to operating normally.
  • You can contact the Connect Support team to request an increase in the Containment Quota.

No, they are attributed to the owner’s account.