Google Shared Drive Limitations

Owned by Marc Miller
Last updated: Nov 14, 2023 by Marc Miller

Contents

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Purpose

This article lists known limitations with regards to Google Shared Drive

Limitations

Google Shared Drive, like SAMBA, does have limitations:

  • Storage space
    • Default quota/size for shared drives is 50 GB per shared drive.
    • All quota/size increases must be sponsored by a UCSB Faculty or Staff member.
    • You can upload 750 GB of data per day across all shares you have access to.
    • You can upload files up to 5 TB in size assuming said shared drive's default quota has been increased over 50 GB.
    • If a single file exceeds the 750 GB daily limit, that file will upload. Subsequent files will not upload until the daily upload limit resets the next day.
  • A Shared Drive can contain a maximum of 400,000 files and folders. Please contact Google support if you need to increase this limit. Google strongly recommends that Shared Drives include less than this limit. Users of Shared Drives with too many files can have difficulty organizing and navigating the content and Google Shared Drive performances might suffer. 
    Our internal testing at cloudHQ showed that Google Shared Drive has excellent performances when there are less than 100,000 files and folders but performances do gradually go down as more files and folders are added.
  • A Shared Drive can include a large number of individual and Google Group members.
    • Limit for individuals and groups directly added as members: 600
    • A group and an individual are both counted as one member against the limit.
    • Total limit of individuals (direct members, or indirect members due to Google Group membership): 50,000
      An individual who is a member of several groups that are added as direct members of the Shared Drive still only count as a single individual.
  • A single Shared Drive can nest up to 20 subfolders, but Google does not recommend creating Shared Drives with a folder structure that complex. Shared Drives will work but users can have difficulty organizing and navigating the content. Instead of a complex hierarchy of folders, consider organizing content into multiple Shared Drives

Expected Use Cases per UCSB Google Connect and ITS

  • Use Google Storage may be used for:

    • Email
    • Native Google Docs (Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms)
    • Work documents (PDFs, Word, Excel)
    • Active & Ad Hoc Collaboration documents (shared with others)

    Use Google Storage may not be used for:

    • Anything classified, export controlled, ITAR, etc...
    • Anything related to finances, medical records or other non approved PI 3 and above data
    • Backups of data 
    • Archival location for files that are not regularly accessed
    • Bulk storage of video or audio files
    • Personal data


Reference:

https://www.connect.ucsb.edu/messaging-collaboration-services/google-workspace/google-drive

https://support.cloudhq.net/google-team-drive-technical-specifications-and-limitations/

https://support.google.com/a/answer/7338880?hl=en

Bypassing those limits

These limits can be bypassed by setting up multiple Shared Drives and Functional Accounts, however it is not recommended in situations if the plan is to have the information be in a single Shared drive location.