Google Workspace
Declutter Together!
Beginning October 6, 2025, updated Google storage quotas will take effect for all student Google Workspace accounts. These limits ensure that our shared storage is used fairly and equitably across campus. Faculty and staff quotas are not changing at this time, but it's a great time to review and declutter your Google storage.
FAQ: Student Google Storage Quota Changes
In July 2022, Google ended unlimited storage for Workspace for Education customers. As a result, San Diego State University must adjust storage quotas applied to all student Google accounts to remain within the limits of our contract.
When will the new quota take effect?
- Student accounts: Monday, October 6, 2025
What is the new student quota?
- Students: 50 Gigabytes (GB)
Quotas for faculty, staff, departmental accounts, and Google Shared Drives remain unchanged.
- Faculty & Staff (including emeriti): 5 Terabytes (TB)
- Departmental accounts: 5 Terabytes (TB)
- Google Shared Drives: 5 Terabytes (TB)
These limits were set after careful review of SDSU’s allocated storage from Google and benchmarking against other higher education institutions.
All students will receive a personalized email in early September 2025 outlining these changes. The message will include your current Google storage usage and tips and resources for identifying and cleaning up files.
Please review the ServiceNow knowledgebase article How to Clean Up Your Google Workspace Storage for helpful tips on identifying and cleaning up your Google storage.
In addition, we’ve provided an overview of these steps in a video:
If you reach/are above your quota limit, access to the services such as Drive, Gmail, and Photos will be affected in the following ways:
- Gmail: Users will still be able to send and receive email.
- Drive: Users cannot sync or upload new files, nor create new files in Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms, and Jamboard. Until the storage amount is reduced, no one can edit or copy the affected files. Syncs will stop between the computer's Google Drive folder and My Drive.
- Photos: Users won’t be able to add any more or back up existing photos or videos.
When a user’s account is 80-100% full, in-app notifications will be visible in both Drive, Photos, and Drive for Desktop to warn users of disruption of these services.
Please review the ServiceNow knowledgebase article How to Clean Up Your Google Workspace Storage for helpful tips on identifying and cleaning up your Google storage.
In addition, we’ve provided an overview of these steps in a video:
For students, you must operate within your 50 Gigabytes (GB) quota. You may wish to consider utilizing a free Google account or similar service to offload large files.
SDSU Resources for Google Workspace
Google Training & Help Guides
Get started with Google Workspace apps like Gmail, Docs, Drive and more with these articles from the Google Workspace Learning Center.
With Gmail, your SDSU email is stored safely in the cloud. You can get to messages from any computer or device with a web browser.
With Google Calendar, you can quickly schedule meetings and events and get reminders about upcoming activities.
With Google Drive, you can store your files securely, share them with colleagues, and open or edit them from any device.
Privacy and Security
Google Workspace is an online cloud storage and collaboration tool that provides users the ability to create, share and collaborate. Your SDSU managed account offers storage, and provides security with technical support.