[Updated] Google Drive issue with 'creation limit of 5 million items' comes to light

New updates are being added at the bottom of this story…….

Original story (published on March 28, 2023) follows:

Google Drive is the company’s well-known cloud storage service. All Google services share the available space in Drive.

Like other similar services, Drive offers multiple plans with different capabilities. It usually works solidly, although users have reported some issues related to storage, file sorting, and more.

Now, Google Drive users are discovering a change that limits the amount of ‘storable’ items to 5 million, even if there is free space left in the account.

Before, Google Drive users could store any number of files as long as there was storage available on the account. But, it seems that that has changed recently and without warning.

According to multiple reports, Google Drive accounts now have a maximum limit of 5 million items or files, even though the storage limit has not yet been exceeded.

Google has applied a 5 Million items limit for Google Drive without any prior warning, causing major inconvenience to several users. If you have an average file-size of < 400KB on a 2TB plan, you'll hit this limit before running out of space! Source

File unable to generate or upload due to 403 Forbidden Error

Our app has a function to back up data to Google Drive and then restore them. The below error is coming when trying to generate or upload the documents:

“The limit for the number of items, whether trashed or not, created by this account has been exceeded.”
Source

‘5 million items’ seems like a very difficult amount to fill, and normal users probably won’t make it. However, Drive is also a service used in companies.

In companies, it is not difficult to fill that amount in cases where dozens (or hundreds) of files of a few KB are stored every day.

We have a business critical operational system in the animal health space which is currently affected by this. This is causing major disruption for tens of thousands of users in-practice and their work on a daily basis.
Source

This issue is currently effecting all of our sites across the UK and we’ve been unable to use our full PMS integration due to this problem. we need a resolution as soon as possible as we cannot continue to function as it is!
Source

There is still no official word on this issue from the Google Drive team. Meanwhile, some users have been sharing their theories about the reason for the new restriction.

For instance, a user suggests that the limit could be related to the maximum file amount per-user that would allow to avoid a general malfunction.

It’s worth pointing out that this issue has been going on for a few weeks now. However, users were getting generic error messages like ‘Upload Failed‘ after exceeding the limit.

So, they were confusing the error message with some other problem. Now, the message has been tweaked, explicitly mentioning the 5 million item limit.

Google has now updated the error message from a generic “Upload Failed” to a mention of the 5-million item limit (see attached screenshot). As far as i know, this is the only written/official intimation of the same!
Source

We will update this story as events unfold.

11:29 am (IST): Google recently announced a system change to the Drive item limitation. However, it has now been rolled back because of the inconveniences caused to some users.

We recently rolled out a system update to Drive item limits to preserve stability and optimize performance. While this impacted only a small number of people, we are rolling back this change as we explore alternate approaches to ensure a great experience for all.
Source

PiunikaWeb started as purely an investigative tech journalism website with main focus on ‘breaking’ or ‘exclusive’ news. In no time, our stories got picked up by the likes of Forbes, Foxnews, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, Macrumors, and many others. Want to know more about us? Head here.