Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET
Every new Google email account comes with 15GB of free storage -- a solid offer at no cost. However, that space can fill up fast, especially since it also covers files in Google Drive and Google Photos.
If your inbox is cluttered with unread newsletters and sneaky spam, there's a way to clean house without losing important messages. With the right approach, you can preserve what matters while giving yourself a fresh start.
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There is always the option of manually cleaning out your Gmail inbox or downloading some material to your local drive. What a pain, though, right? And, chances are, you'll only eliminate so much junk before those gigabytes start stacking up again.
I should note that Google offers a way to pay for more storage by upgrading to a Google One account. The "Basic" plan costs $24 per year for 100GB. The free solution, however, lies in taking a few steps to back up your essential files and reset your data capacity.
1. Back up your files, at least temporarily
If you're going through this process, you're likely serious about retaining emails that could span years. So, as an added safety measure, it's a good practice to back up your emails on your computer or an external hard drive before transferring them back into the cloud.
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To do this, go to Google Takeout and select "Google Photos" and/or "Drive" as the products you wish to export, then follow the prompts. (Once you've completed the transfer, you can delete and free up your hard disk drive (HDD) for other uses.) Be aware that this process can take a while, depending on your quantity of emails and number of gigabytes. To give you an idea, CNET's Jason Chun used Google Takeout with a test Gmail account that held about 75,000 emails, and this wholesale download took around two hours to complete.
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