You cannot tune the underlying database engine, but you can see exactly how your org consumes storage and which objects are the heaviest contributors. The Storage Usage page is your starting point, and a few habits keep you well below the limit.
- Open Storage Usage from Setup
In Setup, type Storage Usage in the Quick Find box and open the page. The top section shows Data Storage and File Storage totals against your allocation, followed by a per-object breakdown of record counts and bytes used.
- Identify the heaviest objects
Sort by Storage descending. Tasks, EmailMessage, FeedItem, and custom logging objects are the usual top consumers. A row count in the millions on a 2 KB-per-record object adds up to tens of gigabytes fast.
- Archive or delete high-volume records
Use Apex Schedulable jobs, Big Objects, or third-party tools to move old records out of standard storage. Closed Tasks older than three years and old EmailMessage rows are common archival candidates.
- Audit Field History settings
Field History is opt-in per field. Untrack fields you no longer audit, and consider Field Audit Trail if compliance requires longer retention than 18 months.
- Schedule a weekly Data Export as your safety net
Setup, then Data Export, then schedule weekly. This is a free, self-serve backup that lets you recover from accidental mass deletes outside the 15-day Recycle Bin window.
Enterprise Edition gets 10 GB plus 20 MB per user license. Professional gets 5 GB plus the same per-user add-on. Most other editions follow a similar floor-plus-per-user pattern.
Most editions get 10 GB plus 2 GB per user license. Orgs with heavy attachment or image workloads need to monitor this separately from data storage.
Sold separately, typically in blocks of 100 million to 1 billion rows. Use it for archived activity history or telemetry that does not need real-time edits.
Standard retention is 18 months. Field Audit Trail (paid add-on) extends this to 10 years and lets you keep 60 fields per object.
- Recycle Bin records still count toward your data storage allocation until they are permanently deleted or 15 days have passed.
- Reports and dashboards do not consume data storage. Their definitions live as metadata, not as records.
- Attachments uploaded before Files were introduced are stored as Attachment records and count toward data storage, not file storage. Migrating them to ContentVersion frees data storage but does not reduce overall storage spend.
- External Object rows do not count toward your data storage because they live in the source system. The platform just renders them through the OData connection.