Seems Google imposes a tough restrict on the variety of information you may add to Google Drive, its cloud storage service—regardless of a scarcity of clear documentation that outlines the restrictions. That magic quantity? 5 million.
This hidden depend solely turned obvious when customers began working into it. As reported on Reddit and shared by CNET, customers found this cover the laborious manner in February. In a submit on Google’s IssueTracker, each people and companies famous that uploads had stopped engaged on their accounts, however with no clear clarification for the failures, leaving customers confused whereas scrambling to take care of damaged automated integrations and backup programs. Upgrading the account to a better quantity of storage additionally didn’t repair the issue.
In early March, Google’s customer support brokers revealed the laborious ceiling in particular person replies to account holders, stating they may not exceed 5 million paperwork—even when the whole storage used was below the plan’s limits. A Google Workspace spokesperson confirmed this coverage in a press release to CNET, saying particular person customers have been restricted to five million complete created objects to “preserve sturdy efficiency and reliability.” Nevertheless, the rollout of this limitation seems to be inconsistent, with others on the IssueTracker thread hitting the restriction on the 1 million mark. In the event you’ve encountered Error 403 (“The restrict for the variety of objects, whether or not trashed or not, created by this account has been exceeded”), you might have tripped into this situation.
Point out of this restriction on file depend stays lacking from Google’s documentation, too. On the time of this text, solely a assist web page overlaying particular person file limitations (with surprisingly positive element) exists. In the meantime, shared drive accounts have their file limits clearly listed as a most of 400,000, and competitor Dropbox has no limitations on the variety of information uploaded; similar for Field, which the corporate confirmed to CNET.
Affected customers now face a tough resolution: Change accounts (both to a rival service or inside Google), or start deleting information. Neither activity will likely be easy for these a part of vast organizations (one individual described this limitation affecting “tens of 1000’s” affiliated with their org) and folk who had used their accounts for cloud backups. Backup software program can create a number of small information as a part of incremental backups, which might add up over time—as was the case for the Redditor who alerted r/Google to this situation.
In response, different Redditors identified a short lived workaround—including all paperwork to some zip information. (By no means change, Reddit.)
