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If a user shares a Google Drive folder with you, does that shared folder count against your own storage quota?

For example,

  1. userA creates a folder whose total size is 200MB.
  2. This folder counts against userA's available storage, which is now reduced by 200MB.
  3. userA then shares this folder with userB and userC.

Is the 200MB only counted against userA's account (folder owner), or is it also counted against the account's of userB and userC?

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  • I posted an answer to a question from 2010, including information that might be relevant to this question. At the time that this question was posted, Google Drive allowed files and folders to have multiple-locations, this makes it difficult to answer questions like this due to the possible scenarios. Since 2022 multiple-location files and folders were migrated to file and folder shortcuts. Since the answers focused on file ownership, it might not be necessary to edit them unless this becomes a canonical question. cc @BlindSpots.
    – Rubén - Volunteer Moderator - ♦
    Commented Oct 11, 2023 at 1:17

2 Answers 2

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No, the file will only take up space in the owner's account.

Here are the file details from a file that was shared with me in Google Drive.

Shared file in Google Drive, as seen by the share recipient

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The owner account appears to be the one who uploaded the file. In other words, if a folder is shared by someone else, giving you read/write access to the folder, but you upload a 2GB file to it, then the 2GB file is owned by you and goes against your storage limit; not the storage limit of the folder owner.

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  • It is possible to transer file ownership, after that the storage will be calculated from the new owner's limit.
    – DarkDiamond
    Commented May 10, 2023 at 14:08