UW-Madison Box - Storage and Quota Information
Beginning June 15, 2020, all new UW-Madison Box accounts and Project Directories have a storage limit of 50GB. In the future, most Box accounts must be kept below 50GB in order to stay within our overall storage cap. However, based on an analysis of our current account storage distribution we believe we can reasonably support a small number of accounts with up to 200GB quotas.
What can I do if I am running low on storage in my UW-Madison Box account?
- Clean up your account: UW-Madison Box - Manage Account Storage Usage.
- Evaluate other storage options using UW-Madison Data Storage Finder.
- Request a storage consultation to review your current Box usage and determine if your use case is a candidate for a larger quota. To submit a request, please follow the link; UW-Madison Box Storage Quota Increase Request
When requesting additional storage, you will need to specify the amount of storage required and provide justification for the request. If the storage is needed for a Project Directory, include the name of the Directory in the specified field.
Having trouble accessing the Quota Request form? You might be logged into a personal Google Workspace account. For details on how to determine if you are logged into a personal account or your UW-Madison account see: UW-Madison Google Workspace - UW-Madison Google Workspace Accounts vs. Personal Google Accounts.
Criteria for Approval of Quota Increase
The first step in any request will be to validate that the requester is actually running out of space versus experiencing some other issue with their UW-Madison Box account. If the account is approaching its storage limit, we will evaluate the current size and use of the account to determine if we can approve additional storage.
Is the request small (10-30GB) and will the total account size be less than 200GB?
If the answer is Yes, we will likely approve these requests. However, there may be circumstances where we suggest box alternatives or ask the requester to review a report of their Box files/folder to see if there is cleanup that could be done.
Is the Box account already over 200GB?
These requests require more engagement in order to understand the specific use case and to determine whether there are viable alternatives to Box. In some cases, we will involve local IT to help assess what options are available to the specific individual or group.
If this is the first request for additional storage for an account that is already over 200GB we will provide a modest storage increase of 5-10GB while we work to better understand your use of Box and recommend alternative approaches.
Requests related to research are given priority, but if the requester or their PI is eligible for Research Drive, we strongly recommend they evaluate that service as an alternative to Box for long term storage.
Is the Requester the owner of the Box account?
Only the owner of the Box account may request additional storage for their Box account. If you are requesting additional storage for a Project Directory, only a co-owner of the folder may make the request. If you are not the owner or co-owner of the Box account or Project Directory, please have the applicable owner or co-owner submit the request.
Student Requests
We are not increasing storage capacity for student accounts.
Backups and Personal Files
We are not actively reviewing whether or not accounts are using Box for file backups or storing personal data. However, if in the course of reviewing a request to increase storage it seems evident that the account owner is storing either backups or personal files we will recommend alternatives such as the Bucky Backup Service or creating an Individual Free Box Account for non-University data.