Managing Storage

The Storage window shows what your workspace stores, what that costs against your plan, and which projects and tables use the space. Each project also has a Storage tab, where you set how long each table keeps its history.

Opening the Storage Window

On the Projects screen, the storage strip shows how much your workspace stores. Click Storage details… to open the Storage window. Click Refresh to reload it.

Reading the Meter

Storage this month shows a meter with three bands:

Band	Meaning
Included	Storage your plan includes.
Reserved	Storage your organization has reserved ahead of time.
On-demand	Storage beyond what is included and reserved.

Below the meter, cards show:

• Stored now — what the workspace stores today.
• Projected average — your average for the month so far, with the latest day carried to the end of the month. This is the figure billing uses, not Stored now. A day when you store a lot more briefly does not set your bill.
• Included, Covered by reserved and On-demand — how the projected average divides across the bands.

Last 90 days charts daily storage for the workspace.

Workspace admins also see estimated dollar amounts, such as the cost of the on-demand band, and a suggestion when reserving more storage would save money. Other members see sizes only. Dollar amounts are estimates, not an invoice.

What If You Delete Data?

Workspace admins can enter an amount in What if you delete data? to see how much this month’s average falls and about how much it saves. The estimate assumes the space is released a few days from now, because cleanup runs nightly.

Storage by Project

The Projects list in the Storage window splits each project’s size into:

• Current (GB) — the data in your tables now.
• History (GB) — older versions kept for time travel and restores.
• Total (GB) — the two together.
• 30-day (%) — how much the project’s storage changed over the last 30 days.

Some billed storage belongs to no project, so it appears on its own rows marked Billed overhead:

• Backups
• Files and documents
• Container images
• Workflow scratch space and copies
• Metadata, cleanup and unmeasured

Other projects totals the projects you can’t open.

On the Projects screen, the Size column shows each project’s storage, and folders show the total of the projects inside them.

The Project Storage Tab

Open a project and click its Storage tab. It shows how much the project stores, split into current data and history, and lists its tables:

Column	Meaning
Table	The table’s name.
Current data	What the table holds now.
History	Older versions kept so you can restore them.
Rows	The table’s row count.
Last updated	When the table was last written.
Time travel	The table’s setting, such as 3 days or Inherit (1 days), with the oldest point you can restore to.
Note	Estimated, Not measured or Being cleaned up.

Below the list, Suggestions point to the easiest savings: a table that hasn’t changed in over 90 days, a table in a trashed project, or a table whose history is larger than its data. Each has a button: Open table, Delete… or Time travel….

History and Time Travel

Every write to a table keeps the table’s earlier version. That older data is its history. Time travel is how long a table keeps it, and it decides how far back you can view or restore a table.

New projects keep 1 day of history by default. You control the setting at two levels:

• Project default. In the project’s settings, Default Time Travel Retention (Days) is a number from 1 to 90. It applies to every table that doesn’t set its own.
• Table. In the table’s settings, Time Travel is Inherit (use the project default) or one of 2, 3, 5, 7, 14, 30, 60 or 90 days.

A table’s own setting only takes effect when it is longer than the project default, so a table can lengthen its project’s default but not shorten it. To keep less history on one table, lower the project default.

Changes take effect at the next nightly cleanup. Raising a setting keeps history from then on. It can’t bring back history that has already expired, and the table’s settings window says so when you raise it.

Caution

When a project or table keeps less history than before, the next nightly cleanup removes history older than the new setting. Removed history can’t be recovered. To keep more, raise the setting before that cleanup runs.

A table’s restorable range is the number of days it keeps, and its settings window shows the oldest point you can restore to. Restoring to a point in time works back to that oldest restorable point.

After its time-travel period ends, deleted data stays recoverable by PlaidCloud support for 7 more days. It doesn’t count toward your storage.

Reducing Storage

• Delete or trash data you don’t need. Use Delete… on a suggestion, or delete tables and projects you no longer use.
• Lower the project’s default time travel. Tables set to Inherit then keep less history.
• Shorten a table’s own time travel, for a table you lengthened earlier.
• Review the suggestions on each project’s Storage tab.

Space is released gradually over the next few days as nightly cleanup runs.

Estimated Sizes and Unavailable Totals

• Estimated means PlaidCloud hasn’t yet measured the table or project. Sizes are estimated from the table’s shape until the nightly measurement runs.
• Snowflake and Databricks projects keep their data in your own account. They show an estimated size and never count toward your PlaidCloud storage.
• Workspace total unavailable means the total for the workspace couldn’t be read just now. Project sizes are shown as estimates. Click Refresh to try again.
• If you see You don’t have access to storage usage, ask a workspace admin for read access to projects.

Related

• Table snapshots — view, revert or restore a table to an earlier point
• Manage projects — project settings and versions