I think I have learned a few things about Google Drive today. I have not looked into all of the close enough to be able to claim that I know this is how things work, but so far this is my conclusion:

1. If you move things to / off Google Drive from multiple clients, everytime things (i.e., files) are moved from the “Google Drive” to a local (local to the client) storage, they also gets stored to the “Google Drive” Trash folder
2. The Trash folder seems to ONLY be visible from the Web / Browser Client
3. The Trash Folder does NOT seem to clean up automatically
   1. If it does, or if there is a setting to make it happen, it is not obvious.
4. Trying to Manually clean up the Trash Folder when there are a “lot” of stuff (either in the Trash Folder itself or overall in the Google Drive) is not trivial task
   1. There is an option to “Empty Trash” which might seem tempting but it took me a while to realize that it does NOT work.
   2. You realize very quickly that the web app is prone to all kinds of “browser” weirdness – most obvious “Clear Cache” (i.e., Browsing History)
   3. The step(s) that worked (or, seems to have worked) for me:
      1. Clear Cache
      2. Select a single large file and right click on it and select “Delete forever”
      3. Repeat step 2 till the total storage usage comes closer to 10Gb than 15
      4. Select a half dozen files and right-click select to “Delete forever”
      5. In going thru steps 2 thru 5 I did run into a few “Server error”. In which case, I closed the browser and opened a different one and started from Step 1
      6. Also, not sure what (if any) impact this step had but I did also clean my local “Trash” – on all my computers / laptops
5. When your total storage usage is calculated, it also counts what is in the “Trash Folder”. Which is why, even after moving large files from your Google Drive to your local storage does not seem to have any affect on the total storage used 😦

– manzoor

P.S. I don’t have any paid service from Google, which might contribute to my experience. Your’s might be different.

P.P.S. I also use multiple laptops / desktops to access my Google Drive and also to move files from / between machines. Which is probably not a usual use case.