Google Drive question
 

Why is it that I have only stored 5GB of data on my Google Drive folder on my PC, but when I go on the Google Drive website, it says I am using almost 15GB of data? I see the storage distribution of Drive, Gmail, and Picasa photos, and the second two total about 500MB.

Are you using google docs sheets etc? Google stores pointer files of very short length for those on your pc. Not the entire document. I don't know why or how to get it to store the full document. Noticed this myself.

Another question regarding google drive.

I know it's NOT best practice to save files out there with your sss# or bank acct # or cc#, but what if say you in your xls or doc type file save the last 4 digits of said id on my google drive. Would you do it or use something like "VISA - MILEAGE PLUS" instead of 1238 (last 4 digits of acct#).

Help?!

Never used Google docs.

Does Google docs support (many cloud services do) older versions?

If so there could be dozens or hundreds of copies of active spreadsheets (every time you save it).

From this Google Drive link:

Items that count toward your storage limit:

Items that don't count toward your storage limit:

Can anyone explain this to me?

I'm currently using 12 GB of my Google Drive space, yet photos are taking up 6 GB of that space.

Why would they take up any space? I don't have "original" chosen as my quality, and the pictures are individually small in size, so shouldn't I have unlimited photos?

Still don't know what's going on. On Google's website, it says my Google drive is using 14GB+ of space. However, when I look at Google Drive on my hard drive, it's taking up about 5GB of space.

Perhaps you are only synchronizing some of the Google Drive folders to your PC?

https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2375083

Again - if you have 9+ GB of Gmail, then that is what Google Drive is saying. Google Drive doesn't store emails on your hard drive.

This could, indeed, be an issue.

What is this an "again" type of answer? It's your first post here... Also, if you read my first post - the second of two sentences - I have a total of about 500MB of stuff in Gmail and Google pics (Picasa),

Found the solution... Even if you delete stuff off of your Drive folder on your computer, they are stored in a Trash folder online. Check https://drive.google.com/drive/trash and clean up your clutter there. That's what took up about 9GB of my Drive space.

Any videos? Any devices which were set to "original" in the past (they won't re-compress things previously uploaded as original) or so old as to have been uploaded via PicasaWeb (ditto.)

Any way to auto-recompress pics? Cuz I have no clue, and considering 6 GB, that's a lot of pictures to go through each one individually

Yes, but it's only slightly less inconvenient -- you can download them all in bulk (you can make the photos all appear as a folder in your drive to sync it down via the Drive app, or download them in folders via photos.google.com, or download them all via Takeout) to your desktop PC, then ldelete them off Google, and then re-upload them using the Photos Backup tool ("Desktop Uploader" here).