Google Drive Storage Policy Update

In our efforts to transition from Google unlimited storage to pooled storage in accordance with Google’s new storage policy announcement, we would like to bring your attention to the potential impact on your research data storage needs. 

Impact on research data

Starting Monday, January 29, 2024, under the new policy all Google@UH accounts will have storage quotas enforced. Storage quotas have already been defined for all individuals based on their affiliation with UH. Faculty have a limit of 100GB. Data stored in Google Shared Drives are limited to 25GB of storage. Google@UH storage is shared across all Google Workspace services, meaning data stored in Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos all count towards your storage quota. Once enforcement begins, data in Google Drive or Google Photos will be read only and you will not be able to upload or modify data until you have deleted some existing data and are under your quota.

This new policy will impact all researchers who rely heavily on Google Drive for data storage and will need to reassess their storage needs. To assist with this transition please see below for additional information on how to prepare and alternate storage options.

Learn more about the Google@UH Storage Limitations and Quotas.

How to prepare

In preparation for this upcoming change, researchers should review their current storage usage and delete or move files out of Drive, Gmail, and Photos.

Please complete the following steps:

  1. To confirm how much storage you’re using, go to https://drive.google.com/quota.
  2. Review and delete large or unnecessary files in Drive
  3. To review and delete large or unnecessary files in Shared Drives, go to https://drive.google.com/drive/shared-drives.
  4. Consider deleting Drive content that you may have copied to a different location in Drive or to a Shared Drive. If a file resides in 2 locations, it will consume twice the storage space.
  5. Search for and remove unnecessary emails. Most emails don’t consume much storage space, so consider starting by searching your Gmail for large emails (usually those with inline images or attachments). For example, search Gmail for “larger:10M” to find emails that are taking up 10MB of space or more.

Storage options

We at UH Cyberinfrastructure are offering competitive storage solutions. If necessary, we suggest exploring other data storage options, such as cloud-based storage solutions. Please find some storage options below.

UH Koa Storage Service

ITS Cyberinfrastructure will offer research storage for lease in September 1, 2023 for a one year period or more. Our storage is priced below commercial cloud offerings.

Koa Research Storage Service

Cloud Storage Offerings

Please find a list of links to pricing of other cloud storage offerings below:

Amazon S3 Pricing page: https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/

GCloud pricing: https://cloud.google.com/storage/pricing

Azure: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/storage/blobs/

Wasabi: https://wasabi.com/paygo-pricing-faq/ ($6/TB/month, no ingress/egress)

Backblaze B2: https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage-pricing.html ($5/TB/month, $10/TB egress)

Wasabi and Backblaze both say they’re willing to sign a BAA

Please note, when using cloud vendors, be careful and take into account any ingress/egress charges.

We understand that this change may present some challenges for our researchers, and we want to ensure that everyone is aware of the new policy and its potential impact. If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out to our ITS Cyberinfrastructure team for assistance at uh-hpc-help@lists.hawaii.edu.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Best regards,

UH ITS Cyberinfrastructure