Monday, 12 June 2023, Bengaluru, India
From kids to adults, people using Google for storage solutions are many. Google provides 15GB of cloud storage with each Google account and an option to increase the storage capacity. This storage solution provided by Google applies to every service, including Gmail, Photos, Docs, Sheets, Drive, and more. With so many things stored in the Google account, it becomes hard to keep track of the cloud storage available readily. With the 15GB storage capacity available, it soon runs out, and there is a need for other storage solutions.
With Google Cloud storage running out faster than ever before, it is important to have another option for a storage solution, or one can always get extra storage options from Google by spending some money. But who wants to spend money on storage? Literally, no one. Hence, it is always to keep track of what’s being stored in Google’s Cloud storage facility. Here are eight simple steps to track your Google Drive/Cloud storage facility to manage your Cloud storage.
Table of Contents
Knowing your Drive storage facility-
Understanding Google’s storage facility is the first step in managing your Drive/Cloud storage options. One can do this by guiding themselves to the “Storage” option on the Google Drive website. Here, people can view a simplified breakdown of their storage usage. With a detailed breakdown of the storage usage, one can take necessary actions and make good use of Google Drive’s Cloud storage solutions.
Deleting files from the Trash folder-
Google Drive’s Cloud storage solutions are very creative and offer great features. One such feature is the Trash folder. When a user deletes any files from Google Drive, it automatically stores them in the Trash folder in the Drive. These files are stored there for a good 30 days after deletion. Users may not have any idea of this, but it also counts for the storage space being used in Drive. After careful steps, one can delete the files in the Trash folder to get more storage.
Though the files in the Trash folder get automatically deleted after 30 days, it is advised to delete them manually.
Getting rid of Gmail attachments and G-Meet recordings-
Gmail is Google’s email service platform that helps us send and receive mail. Sometimes the emails we receive have attachments. Though typical emails take up less than a megabyte of storage, it is the emails with attachments that take up most of the storage. It is advisable to delete these emails once the user has downloaded the attachments.
Google Meet recordings are also a part of your Google Drive storage space. So, delete them if not needed, or download them and delete the recordings.
Google Photos backup and compressing files-
If a user has signed in to their smartphone using a Google account, they are bound to use the Photos app, if not the phone’s gallery app. The Photos app continuously backs up all the photos and videos in the gallery in the Cloud storage. There are settings in the Photos app that lets the user choose which folder to back up, which is a great customization. There are different options to choose from on how to back up the photos and which folders to back up.
It is also advised to compress large files before uploading to Google Drive. Be it a video or a document, compressing it into ZIP or RAR files saves a lot of storage and doesn’t alter any content.
Using Google’s tool to clean storage-
Google has a tool to clean storage that it thinks is not of any use to the user. Just copy this link – ‘https://one.google.com/u/1/storage’ in your browser and use the tool to delete unwanted files.
Make sure how many people use your Google Drive storage solution-
It is possible family members share a single Google Drive storage solution, and that can create a lot of storage problems. It is always good to check if the family members use too much storage. It is only respectable to ask the member to delete some unused data which can release some storage in the account.
Source – Gadgetsnow
