What’s the max file size I can upload to Google Drive?

Mac
1

I’m trying to upload some very large video and backup files to Google Drive, but a few of them keep failing without a clear error message. I’m not sure if I’m hitting a Google Drive file size limit, a daily upload cap, or something related to my storage plan. Can someone explain the current Google Drive file size limits for single files and any other important upload restrictions I should know about?

2

Google Drive’s limits are actually pretty generous for most people, but they can get confusing once you start hitting them. Here’s the breakdown of how it works in the real world:

The Actual Limits

By default, a free Google account gives you 15 GB of storage. The “gotcha” here is that this 15 GB isn’t just for Drive; it’s shared across Gmail, Google Photos, and Google Drive. If you have a ton of high-res photos or a decade’s worth of email attachments, that space disappears fast.

When it comes to individual files, you can actually upload massive stuff – up to 5 TB (yes, Terabytes), provided you’ve purchased enough storage to hold it. For the native Google apps, there are some quirky limits:

  • Google Docs: Up to 1.02 million characters.
  • Google Sheets: Up to 10 million cells.
  • Google Slides: Up to 100 MB for presentations converted to Slides.

What to do when you run out of space

If you’re seeing that “Storage full” warning, you have a few practical options:

  1. The Cleanup: Use Google’s storage manager to find and delete large files or clear out “Storage Saver” photos.
  2. The “Local” Move: Download old projects or giant video files to an external hard drive and delete them from the cloud.
  3. The Multi-Account Hack: Some people just create a second Gmail account (e.g., one for personal stuff, one for “Archive”) to get another 15 GB for free. It’s a bit of a pain to manage, but it works if you’re on a budget.
  4. Upgrade: Honestly, the 100 GB or 2 TB plans are usually worth a couple of bucks a month if you don’t want to think about it.

A Smarter Alternative: CloudMounter

If you end up with multiple Google accounts or use other services like Dropbox and OneDrive, managing them all is a nightmare. This is where CloudMounter comes in handy.

Instead of opening five browser tabs or installing three different “sync” apps that slow down your computer, CloudMounter lets you “mount” Google Drive as a literal disk drive on your Mac (in Finder) or PC (in File Explorer). It makes your cloud storage feel exactly like a USB thumb drive.

Why it actually makes life easier

  • No Local Syncing: It doesn’t download everything to your hard drive. You see all your files, but they only take up space when you actually open them.
  • Multiple Accounts: You can stay logged into three different Google Drives at once and move files between them just by dragging and dropping.
  • Encryption: It has a built-in “Lock” feature. You can encrypt your files before they even leave your computer, so even if someone hacked your Google account, they’d just see scrambled nonsense.
  • Lightweight: It’s way easier on your RAM than running the official Google Drive desktop app alongside others.

It’s one of those things where once you set it up, you kind of forget it’s there because your “Google Drive” just looks like another folder on your computer.

Google’s limits are usually fine if you’re just doing documents, but once you start dealing with media, things get tight. If you’re juggling a few accounts to stay under the free limit, definitely give a mounting tool a look – it saves a ton of clicking around.

1 Like
3

You are not hitting a normal Google Drive file size limit unless your files are huge.

Hard limits for Drive uploads right now:

  1. Per file in Drive

    • Up to 5 TB per file
    • You need enough total storage in your account
    • So a 50 GB, 200 GB, even 500 GB video is fine in theory

  2. Special file types

    • Google Docs: about 1.02 million characters
    • Google Sheets: 10 million cells
    • Google Slides: 100 MB when converted to Slides
      None of that matters for raw video or backup archives.

So if your uploads fail, it is almost always one of these:

  1. You are out of storage

    • Check https://one.google.com/storage
    • That 15 GB free pool is shared between Gmail, Photos, Drive
    • If “Storage full” or close to it, large uploads silently fail or loop

  2. Browser upload fragility

    • Big files over unstable wifi break often
    • Browser tab sleep, laptop sleep, VPN drops, etc
      Fix:
    • Use the Google Drive desktop app and drop the file in the Drive folder
    • Or use a dedicated tool like CloudMounter and mount Drive as a disk, then copy the file there
      These handle connection drops better than the web UI.

  3. Network or provider limits

    • Some ISPs throttle big upstream transfers
    • Corporate networks block or timeout long uploads
      Quick tests:
    • Try another network or a phone hotspot for one file
    • Try splitting a huge backup into 10–20 GB chunks with 7‑Zip or similar and see if those upload ok

  4. File corruption or local disk issues

    • If the same exact file fails every time at different percentages, suspect connection
    • If it fails at the same point every time, suspect disk or file corruption
    • Run a checksum (like SHA256) and try copying that file to another local drive first

  5. Daily traffic limits on your side
    Google does have sharing and download quotas, but normal personal upload usage almost never hits a hard daily cap for Drive uploads. If you script hundreds of GB per day all the time, you might see “rate limit exceeded” style errors, not silent failures.

Quick approach I would try for your case:

  1. Check storage usage on the Google One page.
  2. Install Drive for desktop, or use CloudMounter to mount Google Drive as a local disk.
  3. Upload one of the failing videos from that mounted drive instead of the browser.
  4. If it still fails, split that file into chunks and retry.
  5. Test on another network if possible.

I agree with a lot of what @mikeappsreviewer said about storage behavior, but I would not jump to multiple Google accounts unless you really need to. That adds login and sharing pain. A single account with a paid tier or a mix of Drive plus something like S3 or an SFTP backup box is easier to keep sane.

If you end up juggling several clouds for backups, CloudMounter helps since it lets you move files between Google Drive, Dropbox, S3 and others from one place, without syncing everything to your disk. For big video and backup archives that keeps your local SSD from filling and still lets you park multi‑tens‑of‑GB files in Drive without fighting the browser.

4

You’re almost certainly not hitting a Google Drive file size limit.

Hard limit first, to clear that up:

  • Max size for a regular file in Google Drive: 5 TB per file
    As long as:
    • Your account has at least that much total storage available
    • The file isn’t a Google Docs/Sheets/Slides item (those have different limits, but that’s not your video/backup case)

So your uploads are failing for some other reason. @mikeappsreviewer and @yozora already covered quotas and the 15 GB pool pretty well, so I’ll skip repeating that and hit the stuff they didn’t dig into as much.

1. Check what’s actually full

Even if you “know” you have space, Google is weird about the threshold where things start breaking.

  • Go to: one.google.com/storage
  • If you’re at 95–100%, large uploads often:
    • Start, run for a while
    • Then fail with a generic or no error

Also check Trash in Drive. Trashed files still count. Empty it and see if your free space jumps more than you expected.

2. You might be hitting practical limits, not policy limits

There are some “soft” ceilings that Google does not nicely document:

  1. Giant single-session uploads over flaky connections
    Web uploads of >50–100 GB can die if:

    • Wifi drops for 2 seconds
    • Your laptop sleeps
    • VPN reconnects or your IP changes

    Drive sometimes does not say “connection lost,” it just stalls or errors out.

  2. Browser-specific weirdness
    I’ve seen:

    • Chrome extensions breaking large uploads
    • Firefox timing out long-running upload tabs
    • Chrome energy saver / sleep logic pausing background tabs

    Quick experiments:

    • Try a different browser
    • Temporarily turn off extensions
    • Keep the tab in the foreground while a huge file uploads

I actually disagree a bit with @yozora on “browser is fine if your network is solid.” For multi‑hundred‑GB uploads, the browser is often the worst possible tool, even on good internet.

3. Chunk your backups, not because of Google, but because of reality

Even if Drive accepts 5 TB, shipping a 300 GB or 800 GB single file across the public internet in one go is just asking for pain.

For backup files especially:

  • Use 7-Zip, WinRAR, or similar to split into parts:
    • Example: 10 GB or 20 GB chunks
    • backup.001, backup.002, etc.

Why this helps:

  • If one part fails, you only reupload 10–20 GB, not the whole monster file
  • Drive handles multiple medium‑sized files more reliably than one huge stream
  • You can parallelize uploads a bit

Yes, it’s annoying. It’s still better than babysitting a 200 GB upload that dies at 98%.

4. Drive for desktop vs “mounting” solutions

People will tell you “just install Google Drive for desktop and drop the file into the folder.” That can help, but it also:

  • Syncs more than you might want
  • Eats CPU and RAM, especially with other sync tools installed
  • Clutters your system with another pseudo‑drive

This is where I actually prefer a tool like CloudMounter:

  • It mounts Google Drive as a network disk in Finder / File Explorer
  • No full sync, you only move what you actually want
  • Big upload behaves more like a normal file copy, but over the network
  • You can also mount other storage (Dropbox, OneDrive, S3, SFTP) and drag things between them

For your scenario:

  • Mount Google Drive with CloudMounter
  • Copy your large video / backup chunks into that mounted drive
  • Let it handle connection drops and resume logic in the background

In my experience this is more predictable than browser uploads and less intrusive than installing the whole Drive sync client, especially if you already juggle multiple clouds.

5. Network and “invisible” throttling

Even if Google is fine, someone else in the chain might not be:

  • ISP upstream throttling
    Some ISPs quietly slow long-running big uploads. Symptoms:

    • Upload starts fast, then crawls to almost nothing
    • Eventually the connection times out and Drive just says “failed”

  • Corporate / school networks
    Firewalls or proxies may kill very long sessions.
    Test:

    • Try one failing file from a different network (home vs work vs mobile hotspot)

  • Router junk
    Old home routers can choke on very long, high-bandwidth connections.

    • Try a wired connection instead of wifi
    • Reboot the router before attempting a multi‑hour upload

6. Sanity checks on the files themselves

If the same file fails over and over, and smaller files are fine:

  • Try copying that file to another physical disk locally
    • If it errors or is painfully slow, your disk might be the problem
  • Generate a checksum (SHA‑256) before and after copying locally
    • If they differ, don’t even bother uploading; the file is corrupted
  • Try compressing it to a zip or 7z locally
    • If the compression fails at exactly the same spot each time, that screams disk or file corruption, not Google

7. Simple decision flow for your case

  1. Check space at one.google.com/storage and empty Trash
  2. If you’re not near full:
    • Split your biggest backup / video into 10–20 GB parts
  3. Upload using anything except the Drive web UI:
    • Preferably via CloudMounter mounted Drive
    • Or Drive for desktop if you don’t mind the full client
  4. If failures persist:
    • Test the same file on a different network
    • Check the original file / disk for corruption

You’re not hitting the official 5 TB file size limit, and for normal personal use you’re almost certainly not hitting some secret daily upload cap either. You’re fighting a mix of flaky long-lived connections, browser quirks, and possibly near‑full storage.

Fix those, and Google Drive will happily swallow pretty ridiculous video and backup files.