Google Workspace productivity guide
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On this page- File and folder limits in shared drives
- Membership limits in shared drives
- Group limits on Shared Drives
- Limits on shared drives listed in Drive
File and folder limitsin shared drives
Item cap
A shared drive can contain a maximum of 500,000 items, including files, folders, shortcuts, and items in trash. Learn how to Permanently delete a file from a shared drive's trash.Note: This limit is based on item count, not storage use. We recommend that you keep shared drives well below the strict limit. Shared drives with too many files might be difficult to organize and search, or members ignore much of the content.
You might see a warning banner when you open a shared drive with less than 20% of the 500,000 item limit left.You see the banner only if you can add items to the shared drive.
If you're a Google Workspace administrator, you can see how close a shared drive is to the item limit in your Admin console. Search for "Manage shared drives" and review the Item cap column.
File sharing limits
A file in a shared drive can be directly shared with a maximum of 100 groups.
Storage limit
Your administrator might set a storage limit on shared drives. To see the storage limit (if any) and how much storage is used, open the Details tab in Drive.
Folder nesting and moving
A folder in a shared drive can have up to 100 levels of nested folders. We recommend that you avoid creating many folders in one shared drive. Members might have difficulty organizing and finding content. Instead, organize content into multiple shared drives.
When using Drive for desktop, you can’t move a folder from My Drive to a shared drive.
Upload & copy limits in shared drives
Each user can upload and copy 750GB to Drive within 24 hours. Users who reach the 750-GB limit can't upload or copy more files until the limit refreshes. The limit refreshes within 24 hours.
- You can upload and synchronize files up to 5 TB in size. Only the first file that breaks the limitcompletes uploading.
- Files larger than 750 GB can’t be copied. Instead, download the file and then upload it.
Some virtual file types (such as files that link to files in other external storage systems) can’t be added to shared drives.
Membership limits in shared drives
| Membership | Limit per shared drive |
|---|---|
| Groups | 100 |
| Total members (groups and individual accounts added as members) | 600 |
| Total individuals (individual accounts and group members) | 50,000 |
Within the 600 member limit, a maximum of 100 members can be groups. For example, if you add 100 groups and 100 individuals as members to a shared drive, you can’t add another group as a member because that would exceed the 100 group limit for shared drive members. However, you can still add an individual. The new individual brings the total members to 201, which is below the 600 member limit.
If someone is a member of multiple groups that are members of the shared drive, they only count as one individual toward the 50,000 individuals.
Each group can be a member of up to 30,000 shared drives.
Limits on shared drives listed in Drive
Drive lists up to 1,000 shared drives in the left navigation. You can still access the other shared drives using the direct URL, or search for specific files and folders in the shared drives.
Note: Shared drives are automatically hidden for group members once they reach a certain number of members. This is to avoid spamming large groups with shared drive content. This occurs in two ways:
- If a shared drive is shared directly with a group that has more than 1000 people in it. For example, if a shared drive is shared with a group that has 1200 users, for 200 of them, the shared drive will be hidden by default.
- If a shared drive is shared indirectly with over 2500 people. For example, if the shared drive is shared with 6 groups containing 500 people each, the behavior is that the first 2500 people added (from the first 5 groups of 500 people), will see the shared drive, but then the shared drive will be hidden for the final group of 500 people because they were added beyond the 2500 limit.
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