Google Workspace for Education storage

1. Overview of Google Workspace for Education storage

Next: 2. Understand storage availability and usage

In 2021, we announced a storage policy that provides schools and universities with a baseline of 100 TB of pooled storage shared across all users. That’s enough storage for approximately over 100 million documents, 8 million presentations, or 400,000 hours of video.

This policy goes into effect across all Google Workspace for Education editions for existing customers in July 2022.

How do I know if my organization is impacted?

You can use administrator tools in your Google Admin console to understand how much storage you’re using, set storage-allocation policies, and identify accounts that use a disproportionate amount of storage.

For details and best practices, see the following FAQ, the next pages in this series, and download the Storage Guide for Admins.

Storage FAQ

Expand all | Collapse all

What does pooled storage mean? What counts towards pooled storage?

Pooled storage is storage shared across your users for everything in their accounts and shared drives. This includes, but is not limited to, Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Photo files. Starting May 2, 2022, new and updated Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Drawings, and Jamboard files count toward your organization's storage quota.

To manage how your pooled storage is allocated to users, you can use your Admin console to assign different limits for different groups of users.

Note: Deleted messages and files retained by Google Vault don’t count against the user’s storage quota or your institution's total pooled storage.

When does Google implement the new storage policy?

The new storage policy takes effect for customers with any Google Workspace for Education edition in July 2022.

How much storage is included with Google Workspace for Education?

Schools and universities have a baseline of 100 TB of pooled storage shared across users and shared drives. Institutions with more than 20,000 active users that follow our Acceptable Use Policy will receive additional storage. For instructions on how to calculate your total available storage, see Understand storage availability and usage.

Do I have to be a super administrator to use the storage management page?

Yes, you need super administrator privileges to access the storage management page. Support for Delegated, User, and Reseller administrators will be added in the future.

How do I know how much storage my organization is using?

You can see how much storage your entire organization or a single account is using.

See the storage usage for your entire organization

Important: The total storage won't include Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Drawings, or Jamboard files created prior to May 2, 2022.

You must be signed in as a super administrator for this task.

Sign in to your Google Admin console.
Sign in using an account with super administrator privileges (does not end in @gmail.com).
From the Admin console Home page, go to Storage .
At the top, you can see how much Workspace storage your organization is using.

See the storage status for a single user

Sign in to your Google Admin console.
Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).
From the Admin console Home page, go to Users.
Click a user's name to open their account page.
At the top of the page, you can see the percentages of mail and Drive storage utilized by the user.

Can my users see how much storage they have available?

Yes. Your users can see how much space they have available by going to the Drive Storage page.

Does the storage policy apply to suspended users?

Yes, storage used by suspended users counts towards your storage pool.

What if I need more storage?

Organizations that need additional storage can remove existing content or purchase licenses to get more storage. For more information, see Free up or get more storage for your institution.

Can I move data from Drive to other platforms such as Google Cloud Storage?

Google Cloud offers a number of storage options to meet your needs, such as Google Cloud Storage. Google Cloud storage offers a variety of object-level storage tiers depending on how frequently you intend to access your data. It provides a cost-effective method to store and access your files. You can use open source tools like Rclone or other third-party tools to migrate data to Google Cloud Storage. For more details, contact your Google Cloud Sales representative or contact sales.

Can I purchase additional storage?

To get more storage added to your shared pool, you can purchase Education Plus or Teaching and Learning Upgrade licenses. For each Teaching and Learning Upgrade license, you get 100 GB added to your shared pool, with no cap. For each Education Plus license, you get 20 GB added to your shared pool, with no cap.

If you already purchased Education Plus for your entire organization and still need more storage, contact your sales representative or contact your Google reseller.

Or, you can purchase more granular storage options with Google Cloud Storage.

Next: Understand storage availability and usage