How do these changes affect me as a faculty or staff member?

In June 2022, a storage cap was added above the the amount you had stored in Cornell Google Drive at that time.

If you had less than 15 Gigabytes (GB) stored in Google Drive, your cap was set at 15 GB.

If you had more than 15 GB stored in Google Drive, your cap was set above the amount of storage you were using.

You can see how much storage you are currently using and how much space you have before reaching your storage cap at your Drive Storage page. If you have another Google account, such as a personal account, make sure you're looking at the Drive Storage page for your Cornell account by clicking your profile icon in the upper right. Your Cornell Google account is the one using your netid@cornell.edu email address.

Google will show a storage full notice if your use reaches the cap. See Google's guidance on how to reduce your storage. If you are Cornell faculty, student, or staff, and still need more space for your Cornell work, you can request a higher cap.

A small number of faculty and staff use an extremely large amount of Google Drive storage. They may be contacted to see whether another Cornell storage option might fit their needs.

Do the students I share work with still have Google accounts?

Yes. The only change to student accounts is that they also have a cap added above their current use. When incoming students are issued a Cornell Google account, it will have a cap of 15 GB, which can be raised if necessary for Cornell studies, research, or business.

What changes are occurring for alumni with whom I collaborate?

Alumni who have a Cornell Gmail account will be able to keep using the account with a cap of 5 GB in storage, added on a rolling basis from September 2024 - August 2025.  You are still able to share files with them through your Google Drive and they can share up to 5 GB from their account. 

What other storage services are available at Cornell?

You can use Box for collaboration and cloud storage needs. Box previously announced it was ending unlimited storage for higher education, then reversed that decision. In response, Cornell is preparing for the possibility they might eventually follow through and charge more as storage gets larger. If you are planning a new project that will use a very large amount of storage, please put in a ticket with CIT Collaboration & Utility Services.

You can use Microsoft storage—OneDrive or Teams—for your Cornell projects. All Cornell faculty, students, and staff have storage space in OneDrive.

Large-scale data storage options include Amazon Web Services, Azure, and Shared File Services. For more information, see Storage Options.