1
2 Comments

Google Drive Storage Management Tips (Day 288)

Have you seen your Google Drive storage goes up the roof, yet you are only syncing a fraction of it with 100% sync selected?

Again, not the first time the Google UI gets confusing, intentionally or unintentionally. Here, intentionally I meant maybe it's by design so you end up paying more storage than you should

Look at my example (see banner image), before I checked today, I am warned that I'm using up >90% of my 200 GB subscription plan. My Google Drive has <50GB when all synced... where are those hidden GBs???

First you probably should check your Google Photos, where Google tries to make you auto-sync with all your devices. https://photos.google.com/

The other hidden usage you can find is that if you install Backup & Sync to your laptop, Google will try to ask you to sync your Desktop, Downloads, Documents and Pictures folders automatically (on a Mac). You can find it all here: https://drive.google.com/drive/computers

There is a management tool that Google provides, which I didn't find the link until I read some help articles from a Google search! This page will show you the storage usage break down: https://one.google.com/storage

To manage it, go to this link: https://one.google.com/storage/management

In my own case, there are >100GB in the Trash and it is still counting against my quota! When I thought it's a matter of simply clicking "empty trash" and it should be done, Google this and you shall find that many other have encountered issues just like I did. The empty trash function doesn't work when you have a huge amount of files there!

I still haven't found a working solution that I'm able to empty all the contents in Trash. So I have to pay double the price for the Trash contents until Google fixes it! If you know how, please tell me in the comments!

  1. 2

    The advantage of Google One is that you can delete 500 at a time and it is somewhat robust.

    Google Workspace has the same "buggy" behaviour with dirty or orphaned files but you have to load every file's name onto the screen to be able to select it with a checkmark. This is extremely tedious and there is a certain amount of latency to it which can drive you slightly mad. This is a problem begging for a solution from an indie hacker.

Trending on Indie Hackers
How I grew a side project to 100k Unique Visitors in 7 days with 0 audience 49 comments Competing with Product Hunt: a month later 33 comments Why do you hate marketing? 29 comments My Top 20 Free Tools That I Use Everyday as an Indie Hacker 18 comments $15k revenues in <4 months as a solopreneur 14 comments Use Your Product 13 comments