There are a few ways to clean up shared drives you manage to reduce storage, increase efficiency, and control costs. Log into Google Drive and use the information below as a guide. For more tips, refer to How to Clean Up Google Drive and visit the FAQs. If you are unsure which shared drive(s) are impacted by the storage limit, contact your local IT support team for assistance.
Engage stakeholders and collaborators.
If there are other managers or key members for the shared drive, it's a good idea to involve them in any decision that impact content access. You can even document your changes and store this information on the shared drive.
Check your current storage usage.
To understand how much storage a specific shared drive uses, navigate to the shared drive and click the information "i" icon in the top right corner of the page. The drive's storage usage under Drive details > Storage used in the sidebar. Learn more about checking usage.
Review membership and permissions.
Managers should review shared drive membership and permissions to ensure they are up-to-date. Managers, Content Managers, and Contributors can add or create content in the shared drive. Limiting the number of members who can add content may help you more effectively manage storage.
Evaluate storage needs and remove non-collaborative data.
Shared drives should be used for collaborative data related to administration, learning, teaching, or research. If you have data stored in your shared drive that doesn’t require the real-time collaborative features provided by Google Drive, consider if it would be more cost-effective to migrate it to an alternate Stanford storage solution.
Delete files and folders that are no longer needed.
Managers and Content Managers can delete files and folders within a shared drive if they have the authority to do so. Always be aware of any collaborators on files/folders you delete, as you may cause data loss for those accessing that content.
Empty Trash.
Once you have deleted files, they will be sent to the shared drive’s Trash. Files in Trash will be automatically deleted after 30 days. However, files in Trash still count against the storage limit, so it is recommended that you empty the Trash after deleting. Only Managers can permanently delete data in Trash.
Delete a shared drive, if no longer relevant.
If the shared drive and its content is no longer relevant to any groups at Stanford, you can delete the shared drive if you are assigned to the Manager role for the files, folders, and drive to be deleted and have the authority to do so. (Files and folders can be deleted by other roles, but the drive can only be deleted by someone assigned to the manager role.)
- It's not possible to delete a non-empty shared drive or non-empty folders within a shared drive. Therefore, to delete a shared drive, you must first delete all files within each folder and then delete all empty folders.
- Once the shared drive is empty, you can follow these instructions to delete the shared drive.
