Google Workspace Business Standard provides pooled storage for your organisation. Understanding how it works and how to manage it is important.

Pooled Storage Explained: #

• Your organisation receives a baseline amount of storage, plus additional storage for each user licence. This total storage is pooled and shared among all users and Shared Drives in the organisation.
• For Business Standard, this is typically 2 TB per user, pooled. For example, an organisation with 5 users would have 10 TB of total pooled storage. (Note: Always verify current storage amounts with Google’s official documentation as plans can change.)

How Users Can See Their Approximate Individual Contribution to Storage Usage: #

1. Go to drive.google.com.
2. In the bottom left corner, under “Storage,” you’ll see an indication of how much storage your “My Drive” files, Gmail, and Google Photos (if used with the Workspace account) are consuming. This reflects your individual usage contributing to the overall pool.
3. Note: Files in Shared Drives count towards the organisation’s total pooled storage, not directly against an individual user’s “My Drive” display in the same way as if they owned the files.

Administrator View of Storage: #

• As a Google Workspace administrator, you can view the total pooled storage usage for the entire organisation in the Admin Console, typically within the Reports section or under Storage settings.

What Counts Towards Storage: #

• Files in users’ “My Drive” (Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, PDFs, images, videos, etc.).
• Files stored in Shared Drives.
• Emails and attachments in Gmail.
• Google Photos (if users are backing up photos using their Workspace account).

What Happens if the Organisation Approaches its Storage Limit? #

• The Google Workspace administrator will receive notifications if the organisation is approaching its total pooled storage limit.
• If the limit is reached, users might be unable to upload new files to Drive, create new Docs/Sheets/Slides, or receive new emails.
• To resolve this, the administrator would need to either:
  • Encourage users to free up space by deleting unnecessary files and emails (and emptying their Trash in Drive and Gmail).
  • Delete unnecessary files from Shared Drives.
  • Purchase additional pooled storage from Google Workspace.
  • Upgrade the organisation’s Google Workspace plan to one that includes more storage.