Why is Google Drive a different file size on two different phones?

[AC Question]

My wife and I both have the Nexus 5X. On her phone, Drive is 3.something GBs and on my phone it is just 84MB. Can anyone provide an answer as to why the app is a different size and what can be done? In terms of content stored on Drive I have significantly more than her. Whats going on?

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Does she have any videos stored in Drive, and has she watched any of them? Maybe it's caching some of those files.

 

[ssundaybay]

I’ve got the same problem with my and my husband’s Dropbox. He’s got 50 GB of free space and the usual subscription gives only 8 GB. It turned out that he made his registration and went through some sort of instruction and filled in the questionnaire. This way he managed to get extra space. It looks like it’s the same with Google drive – probably your wife had received some special offer before registration in Google+.

 

[B. Diddy]

I’ve got the same problem with my and my husband’s Dropbox. He’s got 50 GB of free space and the usual subscription gives only 8 GB. It turned out that he made his registration and went through some sort of instruction and filled in the questionnaire. This way he managed to get extra space. It looks like it’s the same with Google drive – probably your wife had received some special offer before registration in Google+.

The OP is referring to the storage use of the Google Drive app (in Settings>Apps>All), not the amount of Drive space available in their Google account in the cloud.

 

[AlphaTango414]

Does her Drive account upload on a regular schedule. There may be files waiting to be uploaded and has been cached or allocated to the Drive storage.