---
title: Shares and quotas
path: administration/shares-and-quotas
status: published
---

Shares are the unit of collaboration. Every file lives in exactly one share. Members of a share see the share in their sidebar with the role they've been granted. Quotas cap how much storage a share, user, or tenant can consume.

## Creating a share

Storage → Shares → **New share**:

| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Name | What users see. Renameable later. |
| Slug | URL-safe identifier. Used in API paths. Hard to change once files exist. |
| Type | `central` (team), `personal` (user's home), or `project` (time-bound). |
| Owner | A user. Default is you. |
| Quota | Bytes, or "inherit from tenant." Defaults to tenant default. |
| Visibility | `private` (members only) or `discoverable` (listed for any user, can request access). |

Click **Create** — the share is live. Add members from the share detail page; see [Sharing with your team](/docs/scaidrive/user-guide/sharing-with-your-team) for the user-facing flow.

## Share types

- **`central`** — long-lived team or department share. The default. Has explicit members.
- **`personal`** — created automatically when a user signs in for the first time; this is their home share. One per user, owned by them, quota from the user's personal quota.
- **`project`** — same as central but flagged as time-bound; appears in a "Projects" filter and can have an auto-archive date. Useful for short-lived shares so they don't clutter the central list forever.

## Quotas

Quotas exist at three levels. Each level caps everything below it.

| Level | Caps | Set in |
|---|---|---|
| Tenant | Total storage for the whole tenant | System → Tenants → tenant detail |
| Share | Storage on this share | Storage → Shares → share detail |
| User | Personal share usage (not shares others own) | People → Users → user detail |

A 100 GB upload fails if it would push any of `user usage + share usage + tenant usage` over its cap. The error message tells the user which level was hit.

## Soft vs hard quotas

By default, exceeding a quota *blocks* further uploads — a hard cap. You can change a quota to *soft* (warn but don't block) per-share or per-user. Soft is sensible for ongoing user education; hard is sensible for cost control.

A quota in `soft` mode still sends warning notifications; it just doesn't 507 the API.

## Usage tracking

Storage → Quotas shows current usage per share and per user, with sparklines for the last 30 days. Click a row for a per-file breakdown.

Usage is recomputed:

- Immediately on upload, delete, or restore.
- Every hour by a background job (covers the rare drift case).
- On demand: **Recalculate** button on any row.

If a number looks wrong, **Recalculate** is the right answer — it walks the file table and resets to ground truth.

## Quota history

Storage → Quotas → **History** plots tenant and per-share usage over time (daily snapshots). Useful for capacity planning. Snapshots are retained per the **Operations → Retention** policy.

## Permissions and ACLs

Share-level role is the coarse permission. For finer-grained access:

- **Folder ACLs** — restrict who sees a subfolder. See [Permissions and ACLs](/docs/scaidrive/core-concepts/permissions-and-acls).
- **File ACLs** — explicit per-file allow/deny. NTFS-style; deny wins.

Admins can edit ACLs from the share's **Permissions** tab in the user-facing web client; they're not separately exposed in the admin console.

## Deleting a share

Storage → Shares → share detail → **Danger zone → Delete**.

Deleting a share permanently removes:

- All files in the share, including version history.
- All external links pointing at content in the share.
- All membership records.

Two safety guards: (1) shares under a legal hold can't be deleted; (2) you must type the share's slug to confirm.

If you want to keep the data but stop access, use **Archive** instead — moves the share to read-only and hides it from sidebars; reversible.

## What's next

- [Users and groups](/docs/scaidrive/administration/users-and-groups).
- [External link policy](/docs/scaidrive/administration/external-link-policy).
- [Compliance policies](/docs/scaidrive/administration/compliance-policies) — legal holds, retention, DLP.