Changes Coming Soon to Google's Storage Policy - News - University IT (2024)

This information was last reviewed March 1, 2023

Students and alumni currently have unlimited storage for Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos. However, Google recently announced their new storage limits for Google Workspace for Education (formerly known as G Suite for Education).

An alumnus of 3 years or more will need to remove ALL Google drive data (and large attachments greater than 25 MB) for email access tocontinue.

*The University is provided a baseline of 100 TB of pooled storage shared across all users. The model provides enough storage for over 100 million documents, 8 million presentations, or 400,000 hours of video. This model goes into effect across all Google Workspace for Education editions for existing customers.

What should you do?

In preparation for this upcoming change, users should review their current storage usage and delete or move files out of Drive, Gmail, and Photos.

Please complete the following steps:

1. To confirm how much storage you’re using, go to https://drive.google.com/#quota.
2. To review and delete large or unnecessary files in Drive, go tohttps://drive.google.com/drive/quota.
3. To review and delete large or unnecessary files in shared drives, go tohttps://drive.google.com/drive/shared-drives.
4. Consider deleting Drive content that you may have copied to a shared drive. If a file resides in 2 locations, it may beconsuming twice the storage space.
5. To search for and delete unnecessary or large emails, go toManage files in your Google Drive storageand follow the instructions for Gmail.
6. Additionally, we have found that the Google Takeout Tool may be helpful when migrating data off your account to another Google account: https://takeout.google.com

These steps should be done as soon as possibleto avoid noncompliance with newly required limits.

Please review the University’s Acceptable Use Policyand make sure you’re using data in accordance with our policies.

We are developing documentation to assist impacted University of Rochester Google users with self-migration. Unfortunately, due to limited resources, UnivIT is unable to offer individualized data migration consulting or assistance at this time.