Google Drive imposes a new limit, which can be reached before taking up available storage space

Google Drive is the world’s most popular cloud storage service, used by just about anyone with an Android smartphone or Gmail email. Storage limits are pretty clear, with Google offering from 15GB of storage for free, up to 2TB for a fee. However, there seems to be another, “hidden” limit that has recently been introduced, which some users have already encountered. They can no longer store new files in Google Drive, even if they have not yet reached the maximum space limit.

Some users have discovered a new limit in Google Drive

Google has recently introduced a new limit to Google Drive, which it does not mention on the subscription page for the service. Whether you have the 15GB, 100GB, 200GB or even 2TB plan, Google now imposes a file count limit. So if you exceed 5 million standalone files stored on a single Google Drive account, the files you store are automatically put into Read-Only mode and you’re encouraged to delete some of the files you already have on the service so you can store new ones. This limit is called the “creation limit”.

Some users, who had more files before this limit was introduced, found overnight that they could no longer store new files in Google Drive and would have to delete from their existing files. One user says he had over 7 million files. The only solution is to “delete” them by sending them to Trash and then permanently deleting them from the trash as well.

This limit wouldn’t be a problem if Google had announced the limits beforehand and not introduced them overnight. There is no documentation of a clear file limit. What there is is a limit on the number of files can be shared with other accounts, which is set at 400,000. Incidentally, other similar services do not specify limits on stored files either. Dropbox, for example, has a limit on the number of files that can be synced with a computer: 300,000.

According to Google, the new limit was introduced to prevent its systems from being used in a way that could affect their security and stability. Also, the number of users affected is extremely small, and files that are added from other “drives” are not counted towards the total number of files, but only those that you manually upload to your own Google Drive account.