Google Drive Storage FAQs

NCSU Faculty and Staff personal Google drives have a total quota of 100GB. This quota includes Gmail, Photos (if you have them), and the contents of Google Drive. Anyone over this amount has been provided a temporary exception, which will be in place until November 1, 2024.

  • Nov. 1 is the cutoff date for all exceptions (If you are over quota in Google Drive, your Google Drive will turn to read-only until you have reduced your storage quota)
  • What happens to those users who do not reduce their storage after Nov. 1:
    • You cannot create, edit, or save any new data to Google Drive
    • Gmail will continue to work (send and receive)
    • You cannot move data to shared drives (or spread it out amongst multiple shared drives to free up space in personal accounts)
    • Google-specific files (Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides will need to be “exported/downloaded into a format that can be stored/backed up in an alternative location *some formatting may be lost during this export)
    • No Photos will be allowed to be stored in Google after Nov. 1

Use Google Drive Inventory to review and clean up your data

Do you need help to find and clean up your files in Google Workspace?

Use the Google Drive Inventory add-on to help you create a list of folders, files, file types and duplicates stored in your Google Drive and any Shared Drives you may have access to.

The Google Drive Inventory add-on is available via the Google Workspace Marketplace. For more information and detailed installation instructions, visit Google Drive Inventory Add-on.

Steps you can take:

Step 1: Review content and file sizes in your NC State Google account. You can do this by visiting https://drive.google.com/settings/storage to see which services consume the most storage in your account.

Step 2: If you are approaching or over your target quota, review the following services to reduce storage usage:

Photos

  • If you have any personal photos, copy/transfer them to a personal backup device/personal Google drive, after which you can delete them from your NCSU google storage.

    Here are a few useful resources:

Gmail

NCSU Gmail should not be used for personal correspondence. In case you are receiving personal email to your NCSU Gmail account, it is advised to do the following:

  • Ensure you visit each personal/consumer service and change your email address to a personal one. 
  • Move any personal emails to the trash.

It is generally good practice to look for any old/unnecessary emails and move them to trash.

Google Drive

Your NCSU Google Drive should not be used to store personal files.

  • If you have personal/non-NCSU items in Google Drive, please copy them and then delete them from your Drive. Google Takeout can assist you in this process.
  • Look for old/unnecessary files and move them to the trash.
  • Visit the Drive Quota page to view your largest files, and determine if these are still needed; if not, move them to trash.
  • Identify items, non-Google Proprietary formatted files (Google Docs, Sheets, Slides) that still need to be kept but do not belong in Google Drive.
    • Examples:
      • Research-focused files (.csv, text, etc.)
      • Non-text files (images/pictures, Videos)
      • Backups/archive storage
    • Note the items’ purpose and how often they need to be accessed.
  • Use the Drive Inventory add-on to identify large folders and duplicated files. Delete duplicates and replace them with shortcuts.

Unattended Files

Orphaned files are files that belong to you, but don’t show up in your directory structure. Therefore, you can’t find it by browsing your folders. This occurs when someone deletes a folder they own where a file you own resides.


There are two different ways to recover orphaned files.

  • Search for the name of the file in the Search bar.
  • Type “is: unorganized owner: me” in the Search bar.

Either way you use, once you have found the file, you can move it to a location of your choosing.

Resources for Faculty with Research Specific Data Storage Needs

Research storage for Faculty

All NC State faculty are eligible for their own individual Research Storage share. Graduate students and postdoctoral fellows are not eligible for their allocations and are encouraged to have their PI or faculty advisor add them as collaborators on the faculty member’s share.

What is a share?

A ‘share’ is an allocation of Research Storage. There are two kinds of shares: individual shares are available to all NC State faculty members for free, in 2TB allotments (with a maximum of 10TB), for the entirety of the faculty member’s employment. There is no cost to this storage, and it is easily accessible from your University computer via mapped drives. Project shares are research storage allocations associated with active projects at NC State.

The Poole IT team can manage and set up research storage for you. To request this, please submit a ticket to the Poole IT Service Desk.

What is Globus?

Globus is a service that is widely used among higher education institutions to transfer and share data

Additional Resources

  • End User Storage Tools & Resources:  A complete list of items that can assist in your review of current storage usage and determining what content can be deleted or migrated to a Shared Drive.
  • NC State Storage Finder: Identify appropriate university-hosted storage locations for various data types.

Google Best Practices