Set storage limits for shared drives

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Education customers go to Set storage limits.

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To prevent shared drives from using too much of your organization’s storage, set a storage limit for their organizational units. When users go to the shared drive, they then see a status bar showing how much storage is being used. As the limit is reached, users see an alert.

If you don't set storage limits for shared drives:

• Storage for any shared drive is limited only by the total pooled storage for your organization.
• Users don't see storage limit indicators in Drive.

Tip: You can also Set storage limits for users.

On this page

• Set storage limits for shared drives
• How users experience storage limits
• Example: Set a limit for one department's shared drives
• Warning message: Some shared drives exceed storage limit

Set storage limits for shared drives

Before you begin (Optional): If you want to apply different storage limits to different shared drives, assign shared drives to organizational units.

1. Sign in to your Google Admin console.

   Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).

2. In the Admin console, go to Menu  Storage.
3. In the Storage settings section, click Manage.
4. At the left, click the organizational unit with the shared drives you want to set a storage limit for.
5. Click Shared drive storage limit.
6. Select On, and enter the amount of storage each shared drive can use.
7. Click Save. If you set a limit for a child organizational unit that was previously inheriting a limit from a parent organizational unit, click Override. If you previously set a limit for a child organizational unit and you want it to inherit the limit from a parent organizational unit, click Inherit.

   If some shared drives already exceed the storage limit, you are warned before the policy is applied. For details, on this page see Storage limit warning messages.

Note: 

• After you set a shared drive storage limit, it applies to a shared drive when a user next adds or edits a file in the shared drive.
• Shared drive limits don’t prevent users from creating more shared drives. If you’re concerned about certain users consuming too much storage by creating shared drives, restrict who can create shared drives. 

Example: Set a limit for one department's shared drives

You might want each shared drive in a “Marketing” organizational unit to have a 500-GB limit, while each shared drive for the rest of your organization has a 50-GB limit. To set these limits:

1. Set a 50-GB limit on shared drives in your top organizational unit.
2. Set a 500-GB limit on shared drives in the “Marketing” organizational unit.

How users experience shared drive storage limits

With storage limits turned on, when users open a shared drive’s Detail panel, they see a status bar showing how much storage is used and the storage limit on the shared drive.

When users open a shared drive that’s close to or over its storage limit, they see alerts at the top of the page.

What happens when shared drives go over storage limits

If a shared drive exceeds its storage limit, users can't add new files or edit existing files. To resolve:

• A Content manager or Manager of the shared drive can move or delete content from the shared drive.
• An admin can increase the storage limit that applies to the shared drive.

Warning message: Some shared drives exceed storage limit

When you apply a storage limit to shared drives, some shared drives might already use more storage than your policy allows. If you continue, those users can’t add new content in the shared drive until storage is reduced or the limit is increased.

Find out which shared drives are over the limit

1. Sign in to your Google Admin console.

   Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).

2. In the Admin console, go to Menu  Storage.
3. Click View all shared drives.
4. Filter shared drives by organizational units and sort them by how much storage they use.

Related topics

• Set storage limits for users