Google Drive’s 5 million item capacity and what it means for you. Some users on Reddit came to this very unfortunate realization thus forcing them to delete or get to consolidate tons and tons of items.
Google Drive’s 5 Million Item Capacity and What It Means for You
Google Drive now limits users to 5 million items according to new findings. A spokesperson from Google Workspace confirmed the change in an email on Monday evening.
This new development is coming as a Reddit user on Monday posted a thread stating that Google had now imposed a 5 million item limit on the Drive accounts of users, without any formal or prior warning. The Reddit user said that people began receiving “Upload Failed” notifications around Feb. 14 for any action, and this is including creating a new empty folder.
What a Spokesperson from Google Workspace Said Regarding the Issue
“To maintain strong performance and reliability, individual users are limited to 5 million total created items in their Google Drive,” a spokesperson from Google Workspace revealed. The spokesperson then went on to say that this very change affects only a small number of users and then recommended deleting some files on your system and on the service.
For those with tons of files, suddenly being asked to remove millions of items is a significant inconvenience, as noted in a report that was created on Google’s issue tracker. A user in the UK said that their business in the animal health space has been severely hit by this new change. It has reportedly caused a major disruption for the “tens of thousands of user’s in-practice and their work on a daily basis.”
Google Failed To Provide Any Guidance Regarding the Limit
Others are however wondering why, if there’s a hard limit, Google failed to provide any guidance. The rollout of this change in question may not be going smoothly either, with some users stating that even at 1 million items, they still cannot create a new folder.
For many users and businesses, on the other hand, storing files online is at most times more convenient than local storage. The overall cloud storage industry and market was valued at $78.6 billion back in 2022, as per reports by Markets and Markets.
Users Can Upgrade Their Google One Account for More Storage Space
Users can easily upgrade their Google One account. Google One is the service that contains Gmail, Drive, YouTube, and many others, and when users upgrade their accounts they get to have additional storage. This additional storage can go all the way up to 30TB. Google One competes with Microsoft’s OneDrive, Dropbox, Amazon Cloud Drive as well as Box. And of course, Google One integrates much better with Google Workspace apps such as Docs and Sheets.
Other Google One Competitors Also Have File Limits
Some Google One competitors as you should know also have file limits. OneDrive for Business on one hand has a limit of 50,000 items per folder. But it’s however uncertain if Microsoft has a hard cap on the overall number of items. Dropbox, on the other hand, says there is no limit to its service in terms of storage space.
Microsoft, Amazon and Box representatives on request for comment did not respond immediately.
How the 5 Million Item Limit Applies
It now seems that regardless of a user’s Google One plan, whether it be 100GB or 20TB, the 5 million item limit still applies. And as a result of that, users with small file sizes are very much likely to hit the item limit before they even get to the storage limit: Someone on a 2TB plan would have to exceed an average file size of 400KB in order to run out of storage before they hit the item limit. So, unless a person is storing large files such as photos and videos on their drive, it is very possible that some are paying for more space than can be used realistically.
Alternatives to Getting More Storage Space
Other Reddit users alternatively pointed out that compressing files into a .ZIP folder ends up counting as one item, which sounds reasonable at this point.
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