End-users have a behavior of uploading large data to their Drives -> sharing them with others -> then removing them from their drives later on when no longer needed.

inSync may end up backing up the entire data before it gets deleted.

This leads to a discrepancy between inSync’s backup size and Google Drive’s usage after the data was deleted.

Frequently modified files in Google Drive -> will only show up the size of the latest file in Google Workspace.

However, in inSync, even with incremental backups, we do add up the modified data to our previously backed up data -> leading to a larger size of backup in inSync than the data size in Google Drive.

Google Native files like Google Sheets, Google Docs, Google Sides, etc. do not show in the storage calculation in Google Workspace.

Supporting document for this point from Google: https://support.google.com/a/answer/9214707?hl=enzippy=%2Cwhat-are-the-drive-storage-and-file-size-limits%2Cwhat-counts-towards-storage%2Chow-do-i-know-how-much-storage-is-being-used-by-my-organization%2Chow-much-storage-do-google-docs-editors-files-use

But in inSync, each byte is accounted for. This will create some discrepancy between inSync backup data and Google Workspace stats.

In Google Workspace, default retention of items in trash is 30 days, post which the data is erased from Google.
Thus, the data that got permanently erased, will not show up in Google Workspace storage usage.

However, inSync backs up the trash as well, leading to some discrepancy between inSync backup data and Google Workspace stats.

Google has more compression for files that get uploaded.

Each file, including image, audio, videos, and all others, gets compressed on Google Storage.

However, inSync's compression is lesser than that of Google.

Also, compression of video, audio, and image files is extremely less on inSync cloud storage by design.

This explains further the discrepancy between inSync backup data and Google Workspace stats.

When the above setting is enabled in the inSync profile, inSync will back up the “Shared with me” data from Google Drive for each user that belongs to that profile.

For example; if UserA has 10GB of data in his Google Drive and User B shared some 2GB of data with UserA -> then inSync will back up the 10 + 2 = 12 GB of data in total; which will lead to a discrepancy of data size between inSync and Google Drive for UserA.

In the above-mentioned causes, the only controllable cause is the setting for “Back up Shared Data owned by other users”.

This is present under inSync Profile -> SaaS Apps -> Backup Cloud Apps -> Edit -> Google Workspace -> Google Drive

Ensure to disable this check box unless absolutely necessary.

If you want to backup shared data by other users for a specific user or set of users, then ensure to put them in one profile where the above checkbox is enabled → and move out all the other users into a new profile where the above checkbox is disabled.

For data that has already been backed up; you will need to get rid of all those older snapshots, to reduce the storage usage, OR discuss with your Druva Account Manager to add more storage to your instance.

For deleting older snapshots, you may do it manually from inSync admin console -> Users -> select the users one by one -> click the Backups tab -> select the data source as “Google Drive” -> select the snapshots that may have the shared data backed up -> to click on “Delete” button to delete them-

If you wish to do it in bulk for a large set of users -> then the best option is to reduce the retention period under the inSync Profile for Google Drive.

Click on Profiles -> click on the profile in which these users reside -> click on SaaS Apps tab -> Schedule & Retention -> edit -> Data Retention for Files -> reduce the “Daily”, “Weekly” and “Monthly” numbers to target deletion of all the snapshots that may have backed up the shared data so far.