The era of 'low-cost' or 'no-cost' online file storage is ending, and all members of the university community must take steps to find the right balance between storage of files and acceptable costs.

Pamplin IT is here to help through these transitions, but we need you to start taking action. 

Please review the action items below. 

We will soon be reaching out to users that are above the soon-to-be quota. We will assist you in moving your files over to OneDrive, SharePoint, or other solutions.

Action Items

View Your Google Storage Usage

Please login here (with your VT credentials) to see how much data you are using: http://pampl.in/GoogleStorageCheck

There are 3 sections of storage: Drive, Gmail, and Photos

Organize your Google Drive

New quotas will be put in place in early Spring 2024. Most employees will have a quota of 5 GB for their personal "My Drive" storage. To prepare to lower the storage, please prep your Google Drive, so we can best assist you in getting below that quota. 

Create 3 folders at the root of Google My Drive

  1. PERSONAL- These will be files you would like us to help you move to a personal cloud provider. This can be personal documents, images, videos, etc. A reminder of Policy 7000: Acceptable Use and Adminsitration of Computer and Communication Systems, we shouldn't be keeping personal files on Virginia Tech machines. We can help you move this to a personal Google account or another cloud provider for your choice. 
  2. ARCHIVE- These will be files that we can move to offline storage. This is specifically for files that do not need to be accessed regularly. Google Drive is HOT storage which has redudencies and backups. This tends to be expensive for files that are not needed. This is great for old computer backups, older research, etc.       
  3. ONEDRIVE- Microsoft also provides some cloud storage solutions. Even though Microsoft is also going through a contract change, each employee will have a quota of 50-100 GB of OneDrive storage (10x-20x more than Google). We can assist you in moving some of your files to One Drive. 

Lastly, there will still be a handful of Google type documents, such as Google Forms, Sheets, etc. These can stay in Google. VT is maintaining Google accounts, just with new limit storage. 

Once you have organized your data, reach out in a form of a ticket (http://pamplin.help) and we can help you move your data. We will give you some additional instructions at that point. We have some different methods of moving data depending on the quantity.  

Move your Google Photos

Plan to transfer photos out of your VT Google Photos account. Personal photos should be moved to a personal account while university photos and videos can be moved to other VT locations. 

See information on how to move photos to another Google Account.

Consulting Meetings

Pamplin IT will also be consulting with departments to understand how Google is being used in administratively. We will then recommend that a migration plan to minimize disruptions to the current workflows.

Transition Dashboard