Alumni Google Storage Information

Owned by Jessica Wilson
Jul 12, 2022
4 min read

Google has announced that they will soon no longer allow organizations like Valparaiso University to have free unlimited storage. Due to this change, the Office of Information Technology is asking every member of our campus community to take part in our efforts to minimize the costs associated with storing our data.  We will also be putting some new practices in place to assist in this effort. One of these new practices will be limiting all Valpo Alumni accounts to 1GB of storage on their Valpo Google account, effective June 30, 2022. We want to provide you with the understanding and support you need to comply with this change so we have included some important information below. Should you have any questions, we hope that you will reach out to the IT Help Desk at helpdesk@valpo.edu for further support.

What is Included in the 1GB?

As a reminder, your Valpo Account, which includes Gmail, Google Drive and Photo data, is owned by the University and should only be used for items related to your work or studies. We hope that by keeping your Valpo account after graduation, that you are more able to stay connected with our Valpo community but we would like to encourage you to use a different account as your primary personal account and to move items from your Valpo Google account over to a personal account.  For example: Any pictures or documents that are personal in nature should be saved to a personal account or on a USB drive. For help transferring files, check out this Google Support page. 

How Much Data Do I Have?

To determine how much data you have stored in your Valpo Google Account, log into your Google Drive. The menu on the left will show, at the very bottom, the amount of data you have stored in your account. Clicking “Storage” will break down your data amounts into 3 categories: Drive, Gmail and Photos. It will also show a list of “Files using Drive storage” and sort them, with the largest file appearing first. 

If you have more than 1GB of storage, you will have until June 30, 2022 to move files to another account. If you do not do so and your account has more than 1GB of storage at that time, your Valpo account will be suspended. Any account that is suspended could be subject to data deletion. Individuals would need to reach out to IT for further assistance to reactivate their account but any lost data would not be recoverable. 

What if I Need More Space?

Should you need more space than your Valpo account is able to provide or if you have personal items that need to be removed from your Valpo account, please consider setting up a personal Google account. Every standard Google Account comes with 15 GB of storage that's shared across Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos. If you need more than the 15 GB the standard account offers, consider upgrading your account to a Google One account, which increases your storage to 100 GB or more depending on what plan you choose.


Frequently Asked Questions

  • Can IT do this for me, this will take too long.
    • We understand that this is an undertaking for some of our alum and we would like to help. Unfortunately, there isn't any real IT magic we can make happen when it comes to transferring the data. It all lives in the cloud so the speeds here will be the same that you would typically  experience at home or in an office. Our advice is to go through the data you have and to delete anything you do not wish to keep. From there, visit takeout.google.com/transfer to download the remaining data to wherever you would like to have stored more permanently. Depending on the amount of data you need to have moved, this may take awhile to achieve and sadly, there isn't anything we can do to help the speed of those downloads. We apologize that we can not help with that issue. If there is another way in which we can assist you, please let us know. 
  • I deleted a bunch but it still says I am over..
    • Have you "emptied" the trash in your Google Drive? You may need to complete the purge of data from the trash before Google fully recognizes that the data is gone. Also, according to Google, it can take up to 24 hours for changes to be reflected in your Drive. Perhaps give your account until tomorrow afternoon and then check back to see if the changes are illustrated. Please let us know if you need further assistance!
  • Can I just transfer ownership?
    • No. Unfortunately, Google will not allow you to transfer ownership to an account outside the organization. You must download and upload your documents. Your account has been enabled to use takeout.google.com/transfer though, to simplify this task.