Course storage shows as 0% despite many files in the course?

[GraceStephens23]

I have an instructor who has had difficulty staying under our institution's 2 GB storage limit per course. For a new course she is building, she wants to ensure she's staying under the storage limit, but no matter what, it is showing "0% of 2 GB used". Is this a glitch I should contact support about, or is it something to do with it being a future term course? If so, is there a way she can see her accurate storage usage before the term starts?

[JeffCampbell]

Regarding helping this instructor with the storage limit, I tend the find the biggest offender is videos. One has to have a TON of pictures and documents to fill a 2 GB limit if no videos are present. I would be looking into that as a primary culprit. 

If that is the culprit, I have two suggestions to reduce that storage size dramatically:

1. Does your institution have Canvas Studio (it will be on the far left side menu)? If so, Canvas Studio's storage is separate from the course storage. I actually confirmed this with an engineer during a presentation given to our district some years ago. The teacher could put their videos into Canvas Studio rather than storing them into the course, then use the RCE when editing content to embed a video from Studio.
2. Consider another video hosting service. YouTube for example. If there is a concern about public videos, one can upload videos to YouTube and make them private, only accessible via a link. The teacher could then embed the videos into their content from YouTube, outsourcing the storage to YouTube instead of their course. Or a similar platform to YouTube.

Either of these can be used to not only display the videos, but also reduce the actual course storage. If that storage is coming from something other than videos, then please share the type of file in case someone on here might have a solution. I use videos a lot and use of both of these options took my class sizes down to less than 500 mb on the high end. 

[dbrace · Accepted solution]

Hello @GraceStephens23,

Was the content in the "future" course copied/imported into it from a "previous" course or was it manually added?

I ask because if you read https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Resource-Documents/Canvas-File-Quotas/ta-p/387061, you will see at the top:

Note: Files imported into a course count toward the course storage quota. However, when courses or course items are copied into a course, the original course storage quota is inherited and the copy does not count against the new course storage quota.

This means that if "course a" has a 1 GB file in it and it is copied/imported into "course b", the file will exist in the "course b" but it will not count towards the quota of "course b".

Does that help?

-Doug

[JeffCampbell]

To clarify, this would occur only if copied. If imported using the Course Import feature, it will count towards the new course storage quota.

Note: Files imported into a course count toward the course storage quota. However, when courses or course items are copied into a course, the original course storage quota is inherited and the copy does not count against the new course storage quota.

As a note, I generally do not recommend coping content outside the Import Course Content menu too much. Copy/Paste works if an institution keeps the archived versions accessible. However, if the original course ends up getting fully deleted (as in no longer accessible), it means the link to the copied content can disappear. This can be especially problematic if the content was created by one person who then leaves, but does not leave behind any of the original media files. I am not sure if exporting a course that contains content that was copied (and linked to older courses) will export the media as media or as links to the older course. If as media, this could at least provide a way to get around the potential issue.

[dbrace]

The additional considerations that you said are important (especially deleting and archiving) but not entirely accurate.

From a solely copying/importing a file perspective (going into "Settings > Import Course Content", selecting "Copy a Canvas Course", and using "Select specific content"), a course's available quota is not changed and the quota gauge does not change because of the large file.

empty course with 2 GB quota

1 GB file is uploaded

 

1 GB file is imported into another course

 

imported file does not cause gauge to change or for the course's overall quota to be changed

- Doug

[JeffCampbell]

So by importing, they mean importing a course stored as an .imscc file?

Interesting. I had never looked closely but see it shows the same on mine too. Thank you for explaining.

[dbrace]

You are welcome. I very rarely use IMSCC files but to me that makes sense (file counting) because (even if the file is from the same institution/instance of Canvas) I believe "the system" considers it to be a unique file (even though the original course and file information is in the code).

As far as course quota is concerned. If the quota for "course b" is too small, it is not even possible to upload a large IMSCC to import.  I just tried to but it would not let me until I increased the quota.  It has a bit of a fail-safe built into it.

-Doug

[JeffCampbell]

This is why I switched to using Studio. For the courses I teach, I have made Canvas courses that have been shared privately with a lot of teachers all over the place who do not always have the same storage limits. Since I can embed the videos by a public link, those teachers can use the videos. This helps keep the storage low enough to not be a problem for those teachers.