Storage full notification appearing on Google Drive desktop app

24 Apr 2023
folders
24 Apr 2023

We previously informed you that Google has updated their Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals licence terms of use. This change is impacting universities across the world.

When you next access your UCT Google Drive account via the desktop app, a pop-up now appears informing you that UCT’s Google Workspace storage is full. This pop-up is not yet visible when accessing Google Drive online, but it may appear without notice.

For now, you can still upload files to your personal drives, and shared drives – as long as you do not exceed the 100GB storage space limit (implemented by Google in February 2023)

Clean up your UCT Google Drive folders

If you have a UCT Google Drive that exceeds 100GB in storage space, you cannot upload new content. However, you can continue to access what is already saved there.

Note that this restriction does not apply to personal folders as yet, although storage quotas will be introduced in due course. 

If your drive is full, unfortunately, individuals or departments cannot purchase additional storage at this stage. Therefore, we encourage you to delete unnecessary or historical data that is no longer needed. Remember to empty your recycle bin once done.

Move information that you still need to either a local drive, or to your UCT OneDrive for Business account, which has one terabyte of storage following the instructions below.

Move your files off Google Drive

Save your Google Drive folders on a local drive

Select all the files and folders that you need to remove from your Google Drive and download to a local file on your computer.

Save Google Drive content on OneDrive for Business

If you have the Google Drive desktop application as well as the OneDrive for Business desktop application installed on your device, open both applications windows side by side and drag and drop the applicable folders from the one to the other.

If you don’t have the Google Drive desktop client installed:

  1. Select all the files and folders that you need to remove from your Google Drive online folder and download to a local file on your computer.
  2. Either open your UCT OneDrive for Business desktop client, which you can install following these instructions, or online version, and upload the applicable files.
     
High usage customers to be contacted soon

With Google’s reduction of storage space available to the university, we need to reduce the amount of data stored in UCT’s overall Google Workspace storage. ICTS will soon contact staff members and students who are using high volumes of this storage to assist with the required actions.