Surprise: Google Drive has a hidden item limit regardless of how much storage space you have

A Reddit user who goes by the name of u/ra13 just discovered something Google has never alluded to – Google Drive has a limit to how much you can store on it! I’m not talking about file size and capacity, I’m talking about the number of files you have – period. The user stated that they started seeing the error “Upload failed” upon trying to add new files and even while creating empty folders as early as February 14th – that’s some valentine’s day gift, Google!

Other people have hit the same brick wall with their Drive files too, and have reached out to the tech giant to basically ask “what the hell?” The Redditor in question has 7 million files stored in their account (I know, a lot, right?), which is over the cap of 5 million items that Google has apparently always imposed. While over the limit, your stuff doesn’t become inaccessible, but you are unable to upload anything new until you remove enough to get back within the green zone. For ra13, they will need to delete 2 million files in order to continue using their cloud storage normally, which is quite a daunting and annoying task. It’s worth noting that this 5 million item issue applies across the board, even if you have extra storage left over.

A Google spokesperson released a statement in response to these issues (kudos: CNET) that many users have been facing, saying that “to maintain strong performance and reliability, individual users are limited to 5 million total created items in their Google Drive.” Since this statement was made, a new error message has been popping up for anyone who has exceeded the limit.

Fortunately, Google provides a tool to help users see what’s taking up the most space in their Drive (as well as other services like Gmail). However, they will now need to be mindful of how many items they have, not just how large they are. Oddly enough, there’s no official documentation on Google Support that explicitly mentions the item limit (except for Shared Drives which are capped out at 400,000 items), leading some to speculate that Google simply forgot to add it or assumed that no one would ever reach it.

Regardless, it’s quite a shocker for anyone who’s stored their entire digital life on Drive, only to discover this unexpected limitation after the fact. As much as I prefer centralizing all of my data, it may be best to avoid storing all of our digital eggs in one basket going forward!