Cloud Storage
With the huge increase in the number of people that have been working from home this year, it’s inevitable that more and more of us have been using cloud storage services such as Dropbox to store files, photos, videos etc so that we can work from anywhere that has a decent internet connection. (Oh, and coffee but that is another necessity entirely!)
While using cloud storage is incredibly useful, there is a limit to how much storage is available and that is dependent on each service and the type of account you have with the service. The more you pay, the more storage you get so it would be helpful to know exactly how much of that storage has been taken up at any point in time.
With that in mind, we’ve chosen 6 of the most popular services (OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, iDrive and iCloud) and worked out the steps for each one so that you can quickly and easily find out how much cloud storage you are using up. Just click on any of the down facing arrows to the right of each cloud service name and the full instructions will be shown to you.
Instructions
OneDrive - Personal
OneDrive – Personal
- If you have a personal Microsoft email address (an email address the ends in hotmail.com, live.com or outlook.com) go to https://onedrive.live.com and log in with your Microsoft email address and password. Once you have logged in, you will be taken to your OneDrive home page which will look something like this.
2. If you look to the bottom left-hand corner of the page, you will see a horizontal bar indicating how much of your OneDrive storage has been used up.
3. So, in this example, 47.1 Gigabytes of storage has been used out of a maximum available of 1 Terabyte.
OneDrive - Business
OneDrive – Business
- If you have a Microsoft business email address (an Office 365 or Microsoft 365 email address that ends with your business name after the @ sign such as john.smith@abcwidgets.com) go to https://login.microsoftonline.com and log in with your email address and password.
2. Once you have logged in successfully, you will be taken to your Office 365 or Microsoft 365 home page which will look something like this.
3. From the icons that are displayed on the left-hand side of the home page, click on the one for OneDrive.
4. OneDrive will open in a new tab of your browser and look something like this.
5. In the top right-hand corner of the OneDrive home page, click on the settings icon which is shaped like a round cog.
6. This will open the settings pane on the right-hand side of the browser page. In the settings pane, click on the text “OneDrive settings”.
7. Your OneDrive settings will now be displayed in your browser and look like this.
8. On this page, click on the line that reads “More Settings”.
9. The right side of the page will change to show more settings information. Under the “Features and storage” heading, click on the line that reads “Storage Metrics”.
10. A new browser tab will open and in the top right-hand corner, you will see a horizontal bar showing how much space is available in your OneDrive.
11. So, for this example the account has 977 Gigabytes of storage available from a total of 1024 Gigabytes (1 Terabyte). Notice that the rest of the page shows a useful breakdown of all the folders in your OneDrive and how much space each folder is using up.
Google Drive
Google Drive
- From your Gmail page in a browser, click on the Google apps icon which is the nine dotted icon displayed in the top right-hand corner of your Gmail page.
2. A drop-down list of Google apps will appear and from this list, click on the Google Drive icon.
3. Google Drive will open in a new tab of your browser. In the left-hand side of this tab, you will see a horizontal bar showing how much Google Drive space has been used up.
4. So, in this example 2.8 Gigabytes of storage has been used out of a maximum available of 15 Gigabytes.
Dropbox
Dropbox
- Log in to Dropbox in a browser (at https://dropbox.com) and after logging in successfully, click on your account icon which is the circular icon displayed in the top right-hand corner of your Dropbox home page.
2. A drop-down menu will appear and, in this menu, click on the word “Settings”.
3. The contents of the browser window will change to display all the available settings for your account. From here, click on the “Plan” tab.
4. The contents of the browser window will change again and show you the plan you are on and a horizontal bar indicating how much space you have used in your account.
5. So, in this example, 253 Megabytes of storage has been used out of a possible 7.75 Gigabytes. Of that 253 Megabytes, 206 Megabytes are normal files, and 46 Megabytes are files that are shared with other people.
Box
Box
- Log in to Box in a browser (at https://app.box.com) and after logging in successfully, click on your account icon which is the circular icon displayed in the top right-hand corner of your Box home page.
2. A drop-down menu will appear and, in this menu, click on the words “Account settings”.
3. The contents of the browser window will change to display all the available settings for your account. From here, scroll down until you get to the “Account details” section.
4. In this section you will see information about how much storage has been used up.
5. So, in this example, no storage has been used out of a maximum available of 10 Gigabytes.
iDrive
iDrive
- Log in to iDrive in a browser (at https://idrive.com) and after logging in successfully, click on your username which is displayed in the top right-hand corner of your iDrive home page.
2. A drop-down pane will appear showing your account details. In this pane you will see a horizontal bar indicating how much storage has been used up in your iDrive account.
3. So, in this example, no storage has been used out of a maximum available of 5 Gigabytes.
iCloud
iCloud
- Log in to iCLoud in a browser (at https://icloud.com) and after logging in successfully, click on your name which is displayed in the top right-hand corner of your iCloud home page.
2. A drop-down menu will appear and, in this menu, click on the words “Account settings”.
3. The contents of the browser window will change and display your iCloud account information with a horizontal bar showing how much storage has been used in your account.
4. If you hover your mouse over any part of the bar, more detailed information will be displayed.
5. So, in this example, roughly half, 1 Terabyte, of storage is available out of a maximum of 2 Terabytes that is linked to the account.
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