Turns out Google imposes a tough restrict on the variety of information you’ll be able to add to Google Drive, its cloud storage service—regardless of a scarcity of clear documentation that outlines the restrictions. That magic quantity? Five million.

This hidden depend solely grew to become obvious when customers began working into it. As reported on Reddit and shared by CNET, customers found this cover the arduous method in February. In a put up on Google’s IssueTracker, each people and companies famous that uploads had stopped engaged on their accounts, however with out a clear clarification for the failures, leaving customers confused whereas scrambling to cope with damaged automated integrations and backup methods. Upgrading the account to a better quantity of storage additionally didn’t repair the issue.

In early March, Google’s customer support brokers revealed the arduous ceiling in particular person replies to account holders, stating they might not exceed 5 million paperwork—even when the whole storage used was beneath the plan’s limits. A Google Workspace spokesperson confirmed this coverage in an announcement to CNET, saying particular person customers have been restricted to five million complete created objects to “maintain strong performance and reliability.” However, the rollout of this limitation seems to be inconsistent, with others on the IssueTracker thread hitting the restriction on the 1 million mark. If you’ve encountered Error 403 (“The limit for the number of items, whether trashed or not, created by this account has been exceeded”), you could have tripped into this problem.

Mention of this restriction on file depend stays lacking from Google’s documentation, too. At the time of this text, solely a assist web page overlaying individual file limitations (with surprisingly high-quality element) exists. Meanwhile, shared drive accounts have their file limits clearly listed as a maximum of 400,000, and competitor Dropbox has no limitations on the number of files uploaded; identical for Box, which the corporate confirmed to CNET.

Affected customers now face a tough choice: Switch accounts (both to a rival service or inside Google), or start deleting information. Neither activity will likely be easy for these a part of extensive organizations (one individual described this limitation affecting “tens of thousands” affiliated with their org) and people who had used their accounts for cloud backups. Backup software program can create a number of small information as a part of incremental backups, which might add up over time—as was the case for the Redditor who alerted r/Google to this problem.

In response, different Redditors identified a short lived workaround—including all paperwork to a couple zip information. (Never change, Reddit.)