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Google Storage Quotas

Google storage quotas are being enforced on June 1st, 2023. Google no longer offers unlimited storage to educational institutions, as a result, storage quotas are the tool offered by Google to place storage limits on various constituent groups throughout the college to keep our overall storage sustainably below the pooled limit offered to educational institutions.

Learn how to prepare for change and get access to additional information and help guides below. For a basic overview of what you should be storing where, review the matrix below.

Storage Options at a Glance

Below you will find information of some of the tools available for storage, as well as details on the storage solution. Faculty and Staff are able to utilize any of the storage options below. Students only have Google Drive and Computer Hard drive or External storage.

Network (LCFiles)	Google Drive	Institutional Shared Drives	Computer Hard Drive or External Storage
Use Case • Storage of institutional files used for the operation of a department • Storage of critical data • Strorage of required records • Files needed for business continuity • Confidential data or regulated data	Use Case • Storage of files related to ongoing projects & work • Storage for active, collaborative work • Files that need to be shared internally and/or externally	Use Case •Active, ongoing work that is collaborative and needed for business continuity and should be tied to the institution, not an individual • Time bound collaborative work with an end date or confidentiality and privacy concerns •Collaborative student work that needs to maintained after graduation •Files that need to be shared •Place to temporarily move files when someone leaves a department to prevent data loss	Use Case •Temporary storage while actively working on or using a file (computer harddrive) •Backing up files on your computer, extra storage space, and retention of important documents (external harddrive/USB drives) • Transfer of files from one device to another (external harddrive/USB drives) •Storage of historical or archival work that an individual or department decides to retain
Storage Limits 25 GB between the department (J:drive) and individual (H:drive)	Storage Limits 75 GB for faculty, 25 GB for staff, 10 GB for students	Storage Limits 25 GB per institutional Shared Drive, 300 GB for Research or Multimedia	Storage Limits Varies based on device
Backup and Retention • Backup of LCfiles is available for 365 days	Backup and Retention • LC cannot recover this data • Files placed in the trash will be permanently deleted and not recoverable after 30 days	Backup and Retention • LC cannot recover this data • Files placed in the trash will be permanently deleted and not recoverable after 30 days	Backup and Retention • Hard drives can fail. Recovery efforts can be made by recovery vendors, but these efforts are not always successful. Individual users or departments will need to pay for the recovery services. LC cannot recover this data • Hard drive files are only as safe and secure as the physical device itself

Institutional Shared Drives

LC refers to our managed Shared Drives as Institutional Shared Drives. These Institutional Shared Drives will hold data that the college will own long term, beyond any departures of individual stakeholders. Visit our Institutional Shared Drives page for additional information on this storage option.

Quota numbers

Faculty 75 GB | Staff 25 GB | Students 10 GB | Institutional Shared Drives Start at 25 GB

In a major change to its offering for schools and students, Google will no longer offer unlimited storage to educational institutions beginning in July of 2022.

Storage quotas are the tool offered by Google to place storage limits on various constituent groups throughout the college to keep our overall storage sustainably below the pooled limit offered to educational institutions.

First, we decided to keep students at 10 GB to let them easily transfer their data to private Google accounts, which are capped at 15 GB, upon graduation.

To develop quota numbers for faculty and staff we analyzed spreadsheets of data on storage usage by group (faculty and staff) and ran an if/then analysis to determine the highest quota number we could allocate to each group (multiplying the number of accounts in each group by the potential storage quota number) to find the highest possible quota number that we could allocate without going over the 100 TB of pooled storage available to the institution. We wound up ignoring those accounts using less than 1 GB of data and calculated the total amount of storage used if the remaining accounts used 90% of their total available storage.

Using this formula and accounting for student storage, we wound up just under 100 TB. Additionally, we added a cushion for shared drives and departmental accounts. This analysis led us to 50 GB for faculty and 25 GB for staff. In order to facilitate teaching and learning as well as ensure that we protect the data of grant recipients, the College of Arts and Sciences decided to purchase additional storage on a recurring annual basis to allow each faculty member to have an additional 25 GB for a total of 75 GB of storage.

We want to acknowledge that we made the decision to prioritize faculty’s storage needs since this is an academic institution and our mission and purpose is to support teaching and learning at the college. Finally, we did our research to confirm that, in fact, these quotas numbers are in line with (and, in many cases, more generous than) quotas being offered by colleges and universities across the country.

Review additional information and help guides on the following pages

Google Quotas for Staff and Faculty

Google Quotas for Students

Institutional Shared Drives

How to prepare for the change:

To avoid future service disruption and maintain our campus usage under 100TB, we recommend reviewing your current storage usage and deleting any unnecessary files in Drive, Shared Drives, and Gmail. Complete the following steps to reduce your storage usage.

Review Google’s “Manage files in your Drive storage guide” to receive information on best practices for reducing clutter in storage and email. Some of the topics covered are listed below.

Delete files by size in Google Drive
Delete large emails in Gmail
Review and delete emails in your Spam folder
Empty the trash in your email and drive. Emails and files that are emptied from the trash are irrecoverable

Move personal* files to your own storage (e.g., a personal Google account, your personal storage). Your LC Google account is only for college use. Please refer to the Responsible Use Policy.

*Personal files reference non-LC files. Ex: Dog photos, family videos, personal files, personal sensitive files

As you complete these tasks, please keep in mind relevant College policies such as FERPA, Responsible Use of Technology Resources, Records Retention, Data Custodianship and Access policy.

What happens if you or the institution exceeds quota?

If an individual user exceeds their storage quota, they will immediately lose the ability to create or edit content in Google Drive and Classroom, however, they will still be able to login into their workspace account, view drive, and use email.

If the lclark.edu domain were to exceed its storage limit by 25% or for 14 days (whichever comes first), everyone at Lewis & Clark will lose the ability to create new files or edit content in Google Drive and Classroom.

See Google’s official storage FAQ here, including a question on exceeding storage limits.

Google Storage Quotas

Storage Options at a Glance

Network (LCFiles)

Google Drive

Institutional Shared Drives

Computer Hard Drive or External Storage

Institutional Shared Drives

Quota numbers

Why are quotas being implemented?

How were these quota numbers decided?

Review additional information and help guides on the following pages

Google Quotas for Staff and Faculty

Google Quotas for Students

Institutional Shared Drives

How to prepare for the change:

Review data utilization

Manage your files in Drive

Review files

Personal files

What happens if you or the institution exceeds quota?