Google Drive for photographers and video makers

A photographer's or film-maker's Drive doesn't fill up like an office Drive. It fills up in shoots: a few hundred gigabytes at a time, in deep folder trees, often with the same footage in three places. Here's where the space usually goes, and how to find it without opening every folder.

Where the space goes in a media Drive

Card dumps imported twice: the same card copied to a backup folder and to the project, or uploaded again after a sync hiccup.
RAW and JPEG pairs shot side by side, with only one of the two ever used.
Proxies, optimised media, render and cache files from the edit, which the editing software can rebuild.
Exports in many versions: v1 to v7, plus a social cut, plus a zipped delivery of the same files next to the unzipped folder.
Old project backups copied in whole "just in case", then never opened again.
Audio: multitrack recordings, session bounces and the same mix as WAV and MP3.

Look at projects, not files

In a media Drive the biggest single file is rarely the problem: it's a whole shoot or project folder. Drive won't tell you which folder is biggest, so start with a tool that adds folders up (see how to see folder sizes). Sort projects by size and the few that hold most of the Drive become obvious. That's where to decide first: finished and delivered, still active, or archive.

Find exact copies by checksum

Google keeps a checksum, a kind of fingerprint, for every uploaded file. Two files with the same checksum are byte-for-byte identical, even if one is called A001_C003.mov and the other interview-final.mov. That's the safe way to find card dumps imported twice: by content, never by name. TidierCloud lists exact copies this way, kept apart from files that merely share a name and size. More in how to find duplicate files.

Decide, then archive

Not everything big should be deleted. A calm order that works for most media Drives:

Empty the Drive trash: after a big clear-out it can hold hundreds of gigabytes for 30 days.
Remove exact duplicates, keeping the copy inside the project folder.
Delete what the software can rebuild: proxies, renders and caches of finished projects.
Move finished, delivered projects to an archive you trust (another drive, another cloud, tape) once you've checked the copy.

Whatever you decide, decide it yourself: TidierCloud only reads and can't delete anything. Every line links to the real folder or file in Drive.

Very large Drives

TidierCloud was built for a 90 TB Google Workspace of film, photo and audio work, so very large Drives are the normal case. A full scan of a big Drive can take a long time; it saves its place as it goes and picks up where it left off. It currently covers My Drive; shared drives aren't included yet.

Questions

How do I free up space in a Google Drive full of photos and videos?

Start with whole project folders, not single files: find the biggest folders, empty the trash, remove exact duplicates (matched by checksum, not by name), delete proxies and renders of finished projects, and move delivered projects to an archive once the copy is checked.

How do I find duplicate video files in Google Drive?

Compare checksums. Google keeps a checksum for every uploaded file, so identical clips match even when their names are different. TidierCloud lists exact duplicates this way, separately from files that only look alike.

Can TidierCloud handle a Drive with many terabytes?

Yes. It was built for a Google Workspace of about 90 TB. Large scans save their place as they go and resume if stopped. It reads only file information, never the files themselves, so nothing is downloaded.

See it for your own Drive

TidierCloud scans your Drive and shows all of this in one place: the biggest folders with every subfolder added up, the biggest files, exact duplicates and the trash, on a map of where the space goes. It only reads, and nothing leaves your computer.

Open TidierCloud

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