My OneDrive is full, but I believe I'm only using 20%

Question

My OneDrive is full, but I believe I'm only using 20%

Koichi 0

My university offers 100GB space for OneDrive. Now my usage is apparently over the quota, and I'm getting warnings. I can't sync new files.

However, in my own calculation I'm only using 20GB. Because of File On Demand feature, it's not simple to estimate the number, but here's how I got the estimate.

For instance, the Info window of one folder in OneDrive on my Mac shows:

2,406,533,271 bytes (5.48 GB on disk) for 1,434 items

In my understanding, 2.4GB of hard disk is used locally, while 5.48GB is stored in clould.

In this way, the sum of the folder/file sizes stored in cloud at the top level of my OneDrive is roughly 20GB. It doesn't seem I have huge hidden files at the top level of my OneDrive locally, as shown by the following command to list the size of hidden and visible files and folders.

du -sh .[^.]* */ | sort -h

This means that I can't explain 80% (~80GB) of my data usage. It's bizzare.

I have tried to free up some spaces by removing large files (larger than 100MB ~ 1GB), but somehow the free space is soon (probably within hours?) filled up, so my usage is always very close to 100%.

I suspected shared files/folders can be the cultpri. It's possible that some of the files eg. PowerPoint slides, shared by the university has taken up a large space. But I can't download those files or see the file sizes.

Have I missed something obvious?

So can anyone give me some useful advice on how to precisely know what size of data I'm using?

29 May

I clicked the "Download all OneDrive files now" button of OneDrive, so I don't have to worry about the effect of the File On Demand feature.

Now all the files and folders have "dowloaded" icons, and the total file size in OneDrive is only 16.41 GB. In the Info window for all the files and folders, it shows:

16,406,146,405 bytes (16.44 GB on disk)

And yet, at the OneDrive web page, it clearly says I've used up 100.0GB.

The discrepancy is now clearer....

2 answers

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Answer 1

Michael Taylor 60,326

Your local storage doesn't matter, it is what you're storing in the cloud that does. Forget the local file explorer, go to OneDrive in your web browser. You can get there easily by going to your MS account in the browser, then going to the apps menu (top left for me) and then click OneDrive. At least on Windows you can also right click the OneDrive icon in File Explorer and go there directly.

At the bottom of the OneDrive main page is your storage usage. The current usage is a hyperlink that you can click on that takes you to the usage pages where you can see whether it is OneDrive files or attachments in Outlook. Click on whichever one is out of control and you'll go to the files that are the largest on disk.

If the storage is filling up frequently then it sounds like either you are running apps that are storing temporary files to OneDrive or perhaps you're getting lots of emails with attachments and they are eating up all the space.

Koichi 0 Reputation points

2025-05-28T03:49:55.46+00:00

Thanks for the answer! OneDrive web page clearly says I've used up 100.0GB. When I click the "100.0GB" button at the bottom left, it takes me to "the lagest files on OneDrive" page. I have deleted no so important large files (100–1500 MB), but the free space is soon filled up repeatedly. I have emptied Trash and the second Trash.

I don't have emails with 100+ MB of attachments. Not sure about temporary files, but if exist, those temporary files should be detected by "du" command, I think.
Michael Taylor 60,326 Reputation points

2025-05-28T13:50:28.7466667+00:00

If the drive is filling up again then what are the new files being added to fill it up? If they are documents then it is possible your local machine is trying to sync documents now that there is more room available.

On your Mac, can you view the properties of the entire OneDrive subtree? You can on Windows. This will tell you how much is being saved to your local cache. Anything that isn't synced yet will still get uploaded. You can control the syncing by changing what gets uploaded to OneDrive.

Again, I don't use a Mac, but on Windows you can get to OneDrive settings and configure things like saving pictures, screenshots and videos to OneDrive. That means all of them will be sent to OneDrive as storage. If the latest files being added to OneDrive are of these types then I'd lean towards this being the issue. There is also an option, in Windows, to backup everything to OneDrive. This would definitely eat up a lot of space if it were enabled. Again, looking at the latest files being added to the cloud would help narrow down what is getting sent to it.

Another option is to pause the syncing on your local machine, in the OneDrive settings, and clear out the space in the cloud again. If it doesn't fill up anymore then it is syncing that is causing the usage. If it continues to fill up then either you have multiple machines syncing or something else is storing in OneDrive. Again, looking at the files being added would help narrow this down.

Answer 2

It turned out that VERSION HISTORIES of large files have been taken up the storage!

On OneDrive web page, go to the edited file and click the ••• button and choose Version History.

Navigate through the list of older versions. Each edit takes up the storage, so manually select and right-click an unnecessary old version, and the dropdown menu shows:

Open File
Restore
Delete Version

Choose Delete Version to free up the storage. You have to repeat this process manually hundreds of times (special thanks to Microsoft OneDrive team for not preparing batch process option!!!)

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/restore-a-previous-version-of-a-file-stored-in-onedrive-159cad6d-d76e-4981-88ef-de6e96c93893

To avoid repeating Delte Versoin (for example, a PDF had more than 200 edits), here's a workaround:

Make the frequently edited large file locally available.
Move this file outside of OneDrive locally on your PC (this is considered "deletion" from the eyes of OneDrive).
Empty Recycle Bin of OneDrive online.
Empty Second-stage Recycle Bin online (this frees up storage)
Move the frequently edited file back into OneDrive locally.
Sync the file (this should result in storing the same file without version history).

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My OneDrive is full, but I believe I'm only using 20%

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