“Delete two million files if you want to upload more.” Can you imagine that you find that message in your Google Drive account when you have plenty of space and you are not even close to completing the contracted storage? Well, that’s what happened to a user who exposed her case in a Reddit thread .
Surely right now you are thinking about what this Drive file limit is and why there is such a limit if you already pay for the amount of storage. The reason is that, on the one hand, there is a limit to the space that we can store, but there is also a limited number of files that we can upload . And we didn’t know anything about that.
You will not be able to upload more than five million files
This problem is not new. In February and March, several users reported the “problem” and screenshots were uploaded with the error message ” the limit has been exceeded for the number of items, deleted or not, created by this account .” what and it’s confusing that, if you have plenty of space left, you can’t upload more, but after the latest controversy, the media ArsTechnica has contacted Google.
And, indeed, it is not an error, but a limit imposed so that the system is not misused. Literally, Google describes it as ” a safeguard to prevent misuse of our system in a way that may affect its stability and security”, adding that “for individual users, it is not something that matters”.
Here we should talk about two things. The first is that there seems to be no trace of documentation , at least so far, about this limitation in personal use, so users were guided by storage space, as is logical.
The second thing is that Google considers that “this limit does not affect the capacity of the vast majority of our users and, in practice, the number of affected users is negligible.” The truth is that five million is an incredible number of files, so you may never be remotely close to reaching it, if it affects you, you are not a very important percentage for Google and you may have to delete some files yes or yes.
Something curious is that, if we go to the Workspace documentation, Google does detail that there is a limit of files that can be uploaded in shared folders . Specifically, the limit is 400,000 files and, as the company says, “this limit is based on the number of items, not on the use of storage space.”
The reason for the limit is that a drive with more files would be very difficult to manage and index in the built-in search engine.
Why the Google Drive file limit is a problem
Now, you may be wondering what kind of stupidity you have to do to upload five million files to a Google Drive account. And yes, it may be an extravagant number for you, but you should keep in mind that Google Drive is not only used on a personal level.
There are many companies that have the Google cloud storage system as their “data center”. It is where backup copies are uploaded, all kinds of information, images, videos… in short, whatever you want.
Five million seems like a lot , but imagine that in a company with hundreds of employees, the image department uploads the models of a project, the accounting department all the paperwork and the video department uploads the backup copies with all the files of each project. .
In the end, there are hundreds of files per week, even thousands, and if we do the multiplication, we can count on the occasional million sooner rather than later. Currently, there are plans of 5 TB per user, the ‘Business Plus’, but there is another called ‘Enterprise’ that promises “as much space as you need”.
It really is 5 TB per user, but with the possibility of hiring extra storage if needed. The price of this plan is not indicated on the Google Workspace website, so you have to deal directly with the company’s sales team.
It is, as we say, a program focused on companies or large work groups, but precisely for this reason, the limit of five million files may fall short. If you want to see if you’re close to the item limit in Google Workspace and you’re the admin of the shared drive, search for “Manage shared drives” and look at the “Item limit” column.
