Google Drive Trash Gets 30 Days Limit. What to do?

One of the major updates announced by Google this month through their official blog includes the new that the Trash folder in Google Drive will automatically emptied in the future. The new change is said to take effect from the October 2020.

If you open Google Drive in your web browser or launch the Google Drive app in your smartphone, you will be shown a notice regarding this upcoming change. The notice banner reads – “Starting October 13, items will be automatically deleted forever after they’ve been in your trash for 30 days.”

This means that if you have any files residing in the trash of your Google Drive account, then will be auto-deleted without any chance of recovery on 13th November. Previously, all the files in the trash folder were kept there forever unless the user manually emptied the trash. So what should be we do?

Google Drive Trash

Check contents of trash

First of all, because this is a new thing, you should check the contents of your trash folder for your Google Drive accounts. Perhaps there are several important files that you deleted by mistake or there are some files that were not useful when you deleted them and now you may find them interesting. You should go through all the items in your trash folder and restore them if necessary.

Move to local storage instead of deleting

Secondly, you should make a new folder in your local storage that could have a name like “Junk”. Next time you want to delete a folder but are not so sure, just move the files to this folder. Once in a while, go through the contents of this new “Junk” folder and delete the ones you no longer need. It will act as your decision folder for the files you are not so sure whether they should be deleted or perhaps be kept for a possible future event.

The new policy is going to take effect soon and you should be ready for the new changes. It will have no effect on the storage space available to a Google Drive user. You should be extra careful not to delete just any file in the future assuming that you will always be able to restore it from the trash. You should make a habit of checking twice before deleting your files in Google Drive. You can read more about this new Google Drive policy on Google blog at https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2020/09/drive-trash-auto-delete-30-days.html.