Google recently announced that new storage limits for Google Workspace for Education (formerly known as G Suite for Education) will take effect in July 2022. Currently, all Emerson users have unlimited storage for Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos, but given these upcoming restrictions, we will need your help removing any data you’re no longer using in preparation for these storage limits.
These steps will be voluntary through 2021. Beginning in 2022, we will implement storage limits on all users in our organization, which has yet to be determined. Get ahead of schedule and prepare now! We’ll share more information, including the next steps on storage limits, later this year.
We will be in touch with a final solution, so do not be alarmed. It is likely that the final cloud storage solution will practice storage limits as unlimited storage is not currently feasible moving forward.
Understanding and Organizing Your Current Storage
- Confirm how much storage you’re using on the Google Drive website.
- We will be reaching out to users who are over the data limit in phases in the coming weeks.
- Review and delete large or unnecessary files from your Drive.
- Focus on locating duplicate files, files that are out of date, or files that you have multiple versions of.
- To search for and delete unnecessary or large emails, go to Manage files in your Google Drive storage and follow the instructions for Gmail.
What Happens if I Am Over-Limit?
If your Google account is over the storage limit following the July 2022 deadline, no data will be lost. Instead, you will be unable to send emails or store files in Drive until your data is lowered to the required limit by Google. You will have the ability to download your data from your account even if you are over the limit.
Practice Good Data Management
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- How to Declutter Your Cloud Files
- How to Organize Your Files For Maximum Productivity
- Be more conscious of what you’re keeping and where.
- Do you have a system? Do you organize your files? Do you store files locally, in the cloud, or in a hybrid? Do you have a flash drive or hard drive for additional storage?
- What are you storing? Videos? Documents? Artwork?
- Do you use software or programs that create large files? Premiere, Photoshop, AutoCAD, etc.
- Backing Up Data at Emerson College
- The data you store within the cloud can leave a large carbon footprint.
- A Carnegie Mellon University study concluded that the energy cost of data transfer and storage is about 7 kWh per gigabyte. An assessment at a conference of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy reached a lower number: 3.1 kWh per gigabyte. (A gigabyte is enough data to save a few hundred high-resolution photos or an hour of video.)
- Compared with your personal hard disk, which requires about 0.000005 kWh per gigabyte to save your data, this is a huge amount of energy. Saving and storing 100 gigabytes of data in the cloud per year would result in a carbon footprint of about 0.2 tons of CO2, based on the usual U.S. electric mix.
- The carbon footprint of our devices, the internet, and the systems supporting them account for about 3.7% of global greenhouse emissions, according to some estimates. It is similar to the amount produced by the airline industry globally, explains Mike Hazas, a researcher at Lancaster University. And these emissions are predicted to double by 2025.