The K12SysAdmin subreddit is a helpful source of information and ideas. Recently, someone asked for feedback on students who are saving pirated movies and music in Google Drive:

💡Preventing this situation is much easier than fixing it which is why I recommend establishing a Drive storage quota for students.

Identify your data hoarders

The first thing I would recommend is running a drive storage report. If you have any students at the top of this list, you might have a problem already. 

It is not unheard of for teachers to have 100GB or more of data, especially if they work with video. Students, on the other hand, should never get anywhere near that amount of data unless they are the yearbook editor or in a video production class. 

One of the most common reasons students use a large amount of data storage is by accidentally syncing personal photos to their school Google Account. Another possible issue, as our friendly Redditer discovered, is pirated or inappropriate media saved to Google Drive. 

Setting a max storage limit can prevent these issues from happening.

Establish a storage quota

You can configure a Drive storage quota for your users in the “storage” area of the admin console. Here are some suggested values to help you get started: 

• Elementary students: 1GB
• Middle School students: 2GB
• High School students: 5GB

Any user who has already exceeded your quota will be unable to create new files through Google Drive until they comply with your storage policy. You can easily provide additional storage for legitimate needs by creating a configuration (security) group.

Additional Resources:

• Set storage limits for your users
• Set a limit for a configuration group
• Reddit discussion