SharePoint Online storage optimization
100 TB on SharePoint sites nobody remembers? Find them now.
In a typical tenant, 30-50% of SharePoint storage sits in sites with no activity in a year, and single forgotten sites hold multiple terabytes - all still billed per GB every month. 1Security ranks every site and OneDrive by size, silence and exposure, so you know exactly which terabytes are safe to reclaim, and cleans them up behind a review window.
The problem
The storage bill grows every month. Nobody knows what is safe to delete.
SharePoint storage only goes one way: projects end, teams dissolve, migrations leave a second copy of everything, leavers keep their OneDrive, and the sites stay. Every GB over the pooled quota is billed, so when the invoice finally hurts, the cleanup question lands on IT - and deleting the wrong site is the kind of mistake everyone remembers.
The numbers are consistently large. It is common to find 30-50% of all storage in sites nobody has opened in a year, a handful of migration and archive sites holding 2-10 TB each, and hundreds of OneDrives of people who left long ago. In bigger tenants that adds up to tens or hundreds of terabytes that could be reclaimed tomorrow.
A list sorted by size is where most cleanups start and stall. Size alone cannot say what is safe: the biggest site might be the finance archive, and a small one might be the only copy of something legal needs. Safe cleanup needs last activity, owners, external users and sensitive files right next to the gigabytes - and 1Security puts them in the same table.
In practice
The cleanup pass that pays for the renewal.
A safe storage reclaim in 1Security, end to end - no scripts, no guessing.
- 01
Sort Sites by storage, then filter to silence
Open Sites, sort by storage descending, then filter to no activity in the last year and no owners. Storage is a first-class column next to last activity, so the top of that list is the cleanup budget nobody was tracking - typically a few dozen sites carrying a large share of the whole tenant.
- 02
Read the risk columns before you archive
The same rows show external users still attached, "anyone" sharing links and sensitive-info counts. A 4 TB archive site with no activity since 2024 and 12 external users is a security fix and a cost fix in one pass - and the sites that still matter are visibly not on the list.
- 03
Stage the cleanup behind a review window
Enable the suggested automation - archive silent sites, remove their external access, reclaim dormant OneDrives - and 1Security stages a proposal per site. 72 hours to review by default, site owners can be asked to confirm, and rejecting a proposal snoozes it. Nothing disappears silently.
- 04
Reclaim the OneDrives and licenses in the same pass
Open Users, filter to no sign-in for 90 days with a license attached: dormant accounts still holding OneDrive storage and paid seats. Storage reclaimed and licenses returned land in one Actions log, so the renewal conversation opens with "we freed 40 TB and 150 seats", not an estimate.
What makes it work
The data that finds risk also finds waste.
Storage optimization is a lifecycle question. It runs on the same site inventory, live counts and staged automations you can read about in depth.
SharePoint Governance Tool
Every site ranked by exposure and abandonment, with storage in GB, last activity and ownership as first-class columns.
Explore SharePoint governance →Microsoft 365 Inventory Tool
The live inventory of every site, channel site and OneDrive - including the duplicates and migration leftovers the official list forgot.
Explore the inventory →Lifecycle & License Reclaim
Dormant accounts, their OneDrives and idle paid seats cleaned in one reviewed flow.
Explore lifecycle →
FAQ
Common questions.
How much storage do tenants typically get back?
Enough to change the renewal. It is common to find 30-50% of storage in sites with no activity in a year, and single migration or archive sites holding several terabytes each. Your own list - sites sorted by size with last activity next to them - is on screen the same day you connect.
How do we avoid deleting something that matters?
Cleanup is staged, not immediate. Automations propose a per-site action behind a 72-hour review window (configurable all the way to manual approval only), site owners can be routed into the review, and a rejection snoozes the proposal. Every executed action is logged with who approved it and when.
Does this need any special Microsoft licensing?
No. Site discovery, storage, activity and exposure columns work from a standard license - the floor is Microsoft 365 Business Basic. Write actions are a separate, opt-in consent.
Can we prove what the cleanup achieved?
Yes. The Actions log records every change with click-through to the exact sites, and Trends track site count, storage and license utilization over time - so the before and after is a chart, not an estimate.
See which terabytes are safe to reclaim.
Connect read-only and get every site ranked by size, silence and exposure the same day. Then stage the cleanup behind a review window - the first pass usually pays for itself.
Or approve the storage invoice again, unread.