Hands-On Tech 226 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

0:00:00 - Mikah Sargent
Coming up on Hands-On Tech. Let's take a look at troubleshooting storage space in Google Drive, google Photos and every other Google solution. Stay tuned for this episode of Hands-On Tech.

Hello and welcome to Hands-On Tech. I am Mikah Sargent and today I'm excited to answer this question. It's something that I get a lot, and it's time to finally provide the answer that you've been looking for. If you have questions, by the way, for me, hot@twit.tv. That's how you get in touch with me. Again, I love that. That rhymes, but I would love to hear from you. As I always encourage, please do write in with all of the information you can possibly provide. You may feel like you're saying too much, but I promise you it's worth having it all. This week's question comes in from Mike, who asks, along with many of you, hello, I hope you can help me figure this out. Along with many of you. Hello, I hope you can help me figure this out.

My wife's phone is telling her that her storage in Gmail, photos, et cetera, is at 98% full and if it gets to full, she won't be able to save more photos, receive email, et cetera. So we have deleted all non-essential email and have backed up all of her Google photos to my Synology NAS. After we did that, she went on a ruthless photo-deleting binge and deleted more than 1,000 photos. We don't even store them at full native resolution. We use one of the reduced-size options. In any case, photos says that it can take up to 24 hours to see any storage space freed up after deleting things. It has been well over 24 hours and Google still says that her storage isn't 98% full. Help, if these are truly deleted? This cannot be the case. How can we free up space in her Google storage? I didn't care if this gets, oh, and then Mike goes on to say hey, even if this doesn't make it on the show, could you please help me, mike, you're on the show, so let's talk about this, believe it or not, depending on which service we're talking about, and it seems like what type of day, what time of day, I mean.

There's a place you may need to go to make sure that the stuff is gone. Even after you think it's gone, you can't forget about the trash. The number one reason why storage space doesn't update after a massive, massive deletion is that when you delete files from Google Photos, from Gmail, from Google Drive, they aren't gone forever right away. They get moved to a trash can or a bin and this is a special folder where, 30 to 60 days from then, those things get automatically deleted. And depending on who you talk to, who you ask, what you read, sources will tell you that that will still count against your storage quota, and I have to believe that this is the case, that even though they get put in that trash or bin spot somewhere, something is maintaining that that is still storage that is taken up. I think it has to do with the fact that maybe someone might pull stuff out of the trash and put it back into their system. I'm not sure, but whatever is the case, you need to go to those different trash cans and bins and remove it from there too, especially within that first week, because, again, it takes 30 to 90 days for those spots to get cleared out.

So here's the good news I have for you. You're going to go onto a computer and you're going to go to the following links. Yes, we're providing you with actual links photos.google.com/trash. Go in there and empty the trash, and then drive.google.com/drive/trash. Go in there and make sure that that is emptied out. There should be a button where you can say delete all or empty all or select all and delete or some version of that that is going to remove it from that spot and that will likely help. I'm checking to.

JammerB says in the chat my sister had the same issue, had her delete and she did freaked out that the percent didn't go down. It disappeared in two weeks when the trash auto deleted. So thank you, jammer B. There is confirmation as well that if it's in the trash it may still be counting against your storage. So head to those different places and delete what's in the trash. That is why on your actual local drive, when you get that storage space issue and you've moved things to your recycling bin or your trash can, it's still taking up space on your machine. You've got to get rid of it from there too, and of course the pedants among us would say that it may even still be taking up space after that. But we're not talking about that right now. So photos.google.com/trash. drive.google.com/drive/trash. We'll have links in the show notes, but head there and you need to go on a computer. The mobile versions of this might not give you the same access, so it's just best to go from a computer and then don't forget about Gmail as well Head to the trash spot and the spam spot and get rid of stuff from both of those places. Make sure it's deleted forever.

Now, if you thought that that was the gotcha, that that was the tricky, tricksy little moment, I've got bad news for you. There's something that's even more tricksy that you may not be considering. Google once had a policy in place that any photos uploaded in Storage Saver, which was formerly known as high quality, did not count against your storage quota, that those photos uploaded via that means were completely free in terms of not taking up your storage space. Google was offering to save them for free. It changed its policy on June 1st of 2021. If your wife has used you have used Google Photos for longer than since 2021, understand that photos uploaded in any quality after June 1st of 2021 count against that quota, but photos stored before that do not. So here's the gotcha your wife went through and did a massive, ruthless deletion. I would not be surprised to hear that many of the photos she deleted if you've been on the platform for as long as you have came pre-June 2021. And because those photos were uploaded at that time. They were uploaded without taking up any space. They were uploaded for free. They didn't count against the quota, so removing them is also not going to make a change to the quota, because those are free photos. So the only way to have an impact storage space is if you remove photos that come from June 2021 to now. Anything from before that is just there is just there. So those thousands of photos may have been oh, these are old. These are screenshots from then. It's a photo that I took accidentally and it's looking off into the whatever. If it came from before 2021, it's not making an impact on that storage space .

Then, lastly, I want to mention Google's excuse me, Google's Storage Manager tool. This is specifically for people who are having issues with their storage space. It's at one.google.com and that's O-N-E, not the number one O-N-E.google.com/storage/management, and when you go there, it sort of analyzes the storage across your whole Google account and gives you feedback and advice on how to save storage space. This is something that can give you kind of an overview of what's going on and potentially provide that solution that you're looking for. But there's something else that I want to mention.

You mentioned that the big reason why you are, you know, really paying attention to your storage space right now is because of a grandchild that you're taking lots of photos and videos of. Of a grandchild that you're taking lots of photos and videos of. My guess is that's not going to slow down. You're going to continue to take photos and videos of your grandchild. So, as difficult as it might be to stomach for some people, it may be time to look at paying for more storage, and by that I mean cloud storage. Google One offers multiple subscriptions to up the amount of storage space that you have across your Google account, and that will make things a lot more roomy for your wife's device and account and your collective increase in media that you're experiencing right now. Between emptying out the different trash bins, which I think is going to probably take care of the solution in the short term and making sure that the photos that you're removing came after Google changed its policy, and then using that storage manager tool, I think you'll get there in the end, but there may come a time where there's nothing left to remove and instead it becomes time to invest in a larger amount of storage available to you.

In any case, as I always say, mike, I would love to hear what ended up working for you, what ended up working for your wife. If none of that works, as always, be sure to reach out. There may be something else we have yet to uncover and I'm happy to help you out with that. I'm also happy to help all of you out with the questions you might have. If you've got a question, email me hot@twit.tv is how you get in touch. Love to hear from you. Love to answer your tech questions. Thank you so much for tuning in this week to Hands-On Tech. We'll be back next week and next month with another episode. Bye-bye.

0:11:14 - Leo Laporte
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