Google Drive has a bizarre file creation limit that nobody knew about

Google Drive is among the best cloud storage services out there, providing up to 15GB of free storage space to every Google account holder. While this is sufficient for a good number of users, some opt to pay for bigger storage plans (among a handful of additional benefits) through Google One, starting at $2 per month. So, when customers pay for additional storage, they understand that they can store as many files as they want so long — so long as they don’t hit their data cap. But it looks like Google has silently enabled quite the arbitrary restriction as of February this year, asking users to delete files from their Drive account if they’re storing more than 5 million files.

That may seem like a whole lot of files, but Reddit user u/ra13 got to experience what it’s like to go over this newly imposed limit. The Redditor claims several Drive users started seeing an error message beginning on February 14, reading “Upload Failed” when trying to open a new folder or basically performing any creation-related action on Drive.

The concern has also been widely reported on the Google Issue Tracker, with Drive users requesting a speedy resolution since at least February. But it looks like there’s nothing to resolve, with Google representatives reportedly telling a few users that a 5 million file creation limit is in place — whether they’re in Google Drive’s trash bin for any of 30 days or in “active storage” as it were. More recently, Google Drive users who are over the limit are reportedly seeing the error message below.

A Google spokesperson told Ars Technica that this is indeed the intended function of Drive and not a bug. The representative also offered some clarification on the limits, saying that the cap is not on the number of files a user has on their Drive but instead on the “items one user can create in any Drive.”

Google says it is taking this step as a preventative measure against the potential “misuse of our system in a way that might impact the stability and safety of the system.” The spokesperson goes on to say this restriction will only affect a “vanishingly small” number of users.

As the Reddit user points out, there’s no mention of this in any official documentation. Among the casualties of Google’s slow rollouts are the confused users who come across them without any reference material available — it’s hard to believe the company didn’t anticipate a situation like this when Drive is known to be shared among hundreds of users, especially in educational institutions or other large private organizations.

A quick gander through the Issue Tracker thread mentioned above sheds light on the impact this new rule change is having on people and organizations. One of the complainants received a rather blunt error message back in February, saying, “The limit for the number of items, whether trashed or not, created by this account has been exceeded.” Consumer and business accounts are equally affected, it seems.

File limits are not new to Google’s cloud services. Google Workspace users have a cap of 400,000 Shared Drive items which includes files, shortcuts, or folders. However, this is clearly spelled out on a support page, unlike Google Drive’s newly imposed limit, which appears to have gone live only in February.

Storing any sort of data across 5 million files isn’t generally considered good practice, but if you’re one of the few that actually need that many assets lying around, perhaps you should consult a different cloud services solution altogether.