Are you getting a “Storage Full” error on your Google Drive account?
Here’s the notice, “To copy more files, you need more space in Drive”.
Followed by, “To see how you’re using storage or to free up space, manage your storage in Google Drive”.
Google Drive is part of Google One, which consists of Gmail, Google Photos, and Google Drive.
You can upgrade your account by subscribing to a Google One plan.
If you don’t want to pay, there are ways to free up your storage space for free.
In this guide, you’ll learn why is your Google Drive storage full and how to fix the “Storage Full” error.
Why is my Google Drive storage full?
Your Google Drive storage is full because there’s a 15 GB storage limit for free accounts.
The storage limit includes Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos.
If you’ve reached the limit, you won’t be able to copy or save new files.
If you don’t use Drive that often but it does not have space, it means that your Gmail or Google Photos is full.
You can check your storage here: https://one.google.com/storage.
The page will give you details on how much storage you’ve used on each Google app.
For example, if you’ve used up the most space on Google Photos, you need to delete unwanted or large photos.
How to fix Google Drive storage full
To fix Google Drive storage full, you need to delete old, large, or unwanted files
Do note that your Drive storage is shared with your Gmail and Google Photos.
Hence, if your Gmail is taking up a lot of storage space, you need to delete some emails.
Similarly, if your Google Photos contains too many photos, you need to delete them to free up space.
You can easily free up space by going to https://one.google.com/storage/management.
On the page, Google will let you know if you have items in the trash or spam that can be deleted.
In addition, you’ll be able to review large items that you can review and clean up.
Fix 1: Delete unused Google Drive files
- Go to https://drive.google.com/.
- Delete large or unused files to save space.
- Navigate to the trash and delete the files there.
Tip: If you want to find large files, go to https://one.google.com/storage/management and click on “Review and clean up” under “Large files”.
Fix 2: Delete junk, spam, or read mail
- Open the Gmail app and tap on the menu icon.
- Select “Spam” and delete all of the emails there.
- Tap on the menu icon again, select “Bin”, and delete all of the emails there.
- Tap on the menu icon again, select “Promotions”, and delete all of the emails there.
Note: You can delete any other unimportant emails other than the ones mentioned above to free up storage space.
Tip: Search for “has:attachment larger:10M” on Gmail to find large emails to delete.
Fix 3: Delete media in Google Photos
- Go to https://photos.google.com/.
- Delete large or unwanted photos to save space.
- Navigate to the trash and delete the photos there.
Fix 4: Upgrade your Google One account
- If you don’t want to delete any files, emails, or photos to free up space, you can upgrade your Google One account to get more storage.
- To upgrade your Google One account, go to https://one.google.com/about/plans.
- There are multiple plans including Basic, Standard, and Premium.
- The Basic plan is recommended as it comes with 100 GB of space (6.7x larger than the free plan).
Note: The prices vary from country to country (if you’re living in Singapore, the basic plan costs SGD 2.79 per month).
Further reading
35+ Free Google Play Redeem Codes
How to Recover Gmail Password Without Phone Number And Recovery Email
