Cloud storage services, such as Google Drive, do not stop growing both in quality and in the number of users. This system is an excellent alternative to the usual local storage that offers us multiple functions. For example, among other things, we can synchronize our local files on the PC in the cloud to save disk space.
With the passage of time, a good part of today’s technology companies are offering their own platforms of this type. Actually, we mean that they give their clients an opportunity to take advantage of a space on their servers to store their own content. As a general rule, we find both free and paid modalities, all depending on the space and the functions that we need.
Likewise, the corporate needs of a company are very different than those that an end user may have in this regard. Some of the giants such as Microsoft or Google already offer their own cloud storage services, in principle for free, for those who take into account the firm. In this case we are going to focus on Drive, the alternative of this type presented by the search giant.
Just by creating a free account on Google, we will already have our own space on their servers. This allows us to synchronize files from our local PC and at the same time save space on the PC’s disk drives.
To give you an idea of what we are telling you, initially a conventional Google account offers us a space of up to 15 gigabytes for free. We will always have the possibility of increasing it, but now through a monthly or annual payment. Therefore, we could say that Drive is a limited free cloud storage service if we do not want to spend a single euro.
Manage the online space
Something that we must take into account is that to this space that we are talking about for storing our own content, all our Gmail mail is added. This means that the messages and their corresponding contents accumulated over the years are part of those 15 gigs that we are talking about. Therefore, those who have been using Google mail for a good amount of time, or who use it constantly, will see that space greatly diminished.
In turn, all the documents that we generate and manage in the office suite of the same company, Docs , are also stored here. All this is subtracting, how could it be otherwise, our available space in Drive . That is why many companies opt for the payment method in order to increase the availability of remote disk.
Another important step in this regard is to choose well the data on our computer that we want to synchronize in the cloud. That way we won’t upload useless information to remote space. In this way, if what we want is to save space in Drive for other files such as videos, photos or documents, we should clean up these other two services.
But at the same time it may be the case that we see that our account here fills up faster than we expected at first. If we cannot find any explanation for this, much of the fault may be due to the lost files.
What are hidden or lost files in Drive
It has become clear because one of the most important points in this type of platform, as is logical to think, is the available storage space. Therefore, everything that is eliminating unnecessary information on these remote servers will be of great help to us. In these same lines we want to focus on a type of files that are going to uselessly subtract space and that we can get rid of.
The first thing we should know is that the hidden files in Drive are those that were originally included in an existing folder. We refer to a file that at the time we added to our own folder or in the account of another user. However, this folder has already been deleted, which can result in missing files on our account.
The problem with all this is that these files that we are talking about do not appear at first glance in the conventional way in which we see the rest of the information. Therefore, they can be accumulated little by little without us noticing by subtracting storage. This means that they do not appear in the usual Google Drive list, but they continue to occupy space in the account.
To all this, we must add that the search giant does not offer us a direct method to get rid of these. However, we can always use a trick to remove these elements.
Delete hidden unnecessary files
As you can imagine, below we are going to talk about how to get rid of these files and thus save disk remotely. To do this, the first thing we do is access our personal space that Google offers us . This is something that as most of you already know, we carry out from any internet browser .
At that time, all the content that we have stored here will appear on the screen, that is, on the company’s servers. Here we see both the folders and the files that we have been saving over the years. However, as we mentioned before, these orphans or lost we will not see them in the first instance.
In order to see these files on the screen, what we must do is locate the search box that is located at the top of the main interface . Then, in it we write the following:
is:unorganized owner:me
After pressing the Enter key, at that moment we will see a series of files that are the ones that have been orphaned or lost and that we do not need. Therefore, we can mark one of them and click with the right mouse button. In the contextual menu that appears, we no longer have to go to the Delete option. This is something that we can repeat with all these elements that only take up space in a useless way.
Of course, we must bear in mind that we have not yet completely gotten rid of these files. In order to fully recover the storage space occupied by these, we must also remove them from the trash. In the right pane of the Drive interface we find the entry called Trash . Next, we click with the right button of the mouse on the elements that we see and select the option Delete permanently .
In this way we will be able to save valuable space to store other contents in Drive that are really useful to us.
