Google Storage Changes

Update to this article can be found here.

Google's New Storage Limits

Google announced significant storage changes that will greatly impact The New School community as they will no longer be offering unlimited storage for their higher education customers.

New School students, faculty, staff, and alumni have accumulated over 900 terabytes of data, including but not limited to emails, documents, and videos at Google. With the changes Google is imposing on The New School, we as an organization will have to reduce our storage footprint by more than two-thirds to align with the new limits Google has set. 

When will Google begin imposing storage changes onto The New School?

Information Technology has been working with Google regarding their new storage limits and were recently provided a December 2022 deadline extension. We’re now working to extend the deadline to July 2024 as we try to fully understand these changes and determine the exact parameters of the transition. 

How is Information Technology (IT) responding?

We recognize the significant impact this is going to have on our university and IT is actively trying to understand the full impact this is going to have. While we determine the full scope of the impact, we are taking steps to lessen the immediacy of the changes. 

Coordinating with Senates and Stakeholder Representatives
IT has begun outreach and communication with the student, faculty, and staff senates as well as other stakeholder representatives to fully explain the situation and hear responses to these new changes. We have expressed our desire to work with the senates and other stakeholder representatives as we continue through this transition.

Shifting to Google Education Plus Paid Model
The New School is currently utilizing Google’s free higher education service. This service moving forward will be limited to an amount that is not acceptable for the needs of our New School community. For that reason, we have begun making the shift to their paid Education Plus model which will provide us with more storage. However, even with this paid model, we are still being limited based on Google’s storage caps.

Working to Join a Consortium for Extended Timeline
Information Technology is working to join a consortium of higher education institutions called Internet2. Joining this consortium would mean we would be able to take advantage of an extended deadline of July 2024.

Analyzing Google Data
On April 26, 2022, Google finally provided us with tools to help us better understand how Google storage is being used at the university. We are utilizing these resources to gain insight that we can share with the New School community and have more in-depth conversations with the senates and stakeholder representatives about future decisions to be made.

What does this mean for The New School community?

While we still need to get a better understanding of our Google storage, students, faculty, staff, and other New School community members should be aware of certain things this will mean for The New School overall.

Collectively have to reduce our storage footprint
As a university and larger community, we will all need to substantially clean up our stored Google documents, files, etc. to align with Google’s new storage limits. You can do this by following the What can I do to prepare? guidelines below.

Full suite of Google Services will only be available for those currently enrolled or working at The New School
The New School is no longer able to offer the full suite of online services, including storage, for thosenot currently enrolled or working at the university. More information about when services and access will be removed will be communicated in advance.

Eventually, individual New School accounts will have a storage limit placed on them.
Exact storage limits have not yet been determined. Information Technology will be coordinating with key university constituents on storage quotas, data retention and deletion, content migration, implementation timeline, and other essential components of this process. As more information and decisions become available, we will be providing more details and communications.

What can I do to prepare?

While we are working for an extended deadline of July 2024, it is important to begin getting into the mindset that storage limitations are not unlimited and we need to be conscious of the amount of storage we are consuming. This is going to be a cultural shift for our university and we need to start preparing now for a smoother transition. Here are some things you can do now to prepare:

Check your storage

See how much storage you are using in Drive and Gmail by going to https://drive.google.com/drive/quota. 

Clean up Gmail

• • • Delete individual or multiple emails. Visit Google's support article to learn how.

    • Find large emails to delete.

      • To find large emails that take up space, in the Gmail search bar type: “has:attachment larger:5M” and press Enter. This will identify emails with large attachments that can be deleted.

    • Identify and delete old messages.

      • To find old messages you may no longer need, in the Gmail search bar type: “older: 2019-01-01” and press Enter. This will identify messages older than January 1, 2019. You can change this date to be sooner or older, as well as add additional filters like a specific folder.

    • Empty Gmail Trash.

      • On the left side of the page, click More.

      • Scroll to Trash.

      • Check the box next to messages you want to permanently delete, then click Delete forever.

      • Note: The Delete forever option is only available in the Trash. You won’t be able to delete items forever from the Search result view.

      • To delete all messages in your trash, click Empty Trash now.

Clean up Drive

• • Review and delete large or unnecessary files in Drive.

    • Make sure you are logged into your New School Google account (@newschool.edu) and go to https://drive.google.com/drive/quota. Here you will see the files in your Google Drive listed by the amount of storage space used.

    • Delete any large files that you no longer need by right-clicking on the file name and selecting Remove.

  • Review and delete old files.

    • Make sure you are logged into your New School Google account (@newschool.edu) and go to https://drive.google.com/drive/my-drive. Here you will see all of the folders and files you own.

    • You can find your oldest files by clicking on the Last modified column and changing the selections from Relevance to Last modified.

• • • Once selected, click on Last modified again to show an up arrow which will sort by the oldest files first.

• • • Delete any old files that you no longer need by right clicking on the file name and selecting Remove.

    • You can also find old files by searching a date. Type into the search bar: “before:2015-01-01”. This will identify files created before January 1, 2015. To locate older or newer files, change the date.

  • If you manage a Google shared drive (formally team drives), review and delete large or unnecessary files in shared drives.

    • Make sure you are logged into your New School Google account (@newschool.edu) and go to https://drive.google.com/drive/shared-drives.

    • Check the last time a file was used or modified

    • When reviewing files to delete, it's helpful to know when they were last edited or accessed. To do this:

    • Find the file in Google Drive.

    • Right-click on it and choose "View details":

• • • or click on the "i" with a circle in the top-right corner:

• • • The last Modified, Opened, and Created dates will be displayed in a panel on the right:

• • Don’t forget to empty your Google Drive Trash.

    • By default, files placed in Google Drive trash will be permanently deleted after 30 days, however, files located in your Google Drive trash will still consume storage space until they are permanently deleted.

    • To empty the Trash, click on Trash on the left side of the page and choose "Empty trash." Once emptied, your storage space used should decrease in about 24 hours depending on how much was deleted. See Google's support article for additional details. 

More information

As we begin transitioning to Google's Education Plus model, IT will provide constant communication about the changes that lie ahead. We will continue to update this page as information becomes available as well as add more information to our Google Storage Changes FAQ to help assist everyone through this process. 

If at any point you have questions or concerns, please reach out to IT Central at itcentral@newschool.edu.