How Much Disk Space a Google Takeout Export Needs
The zips, the unpacked folder and the organized library each take a full copy. How to count the space, pick a drive, and what happens when it fills.
The export download is 180 GB. You have 200 GB free. That is not enough, and finding out halfway through the unzip is the bad way to learn it.
Three copies, not one
A Takeout export exists in up to three places on your disk at once.
The zips. Whatever the download added up to. Photos do not compress, so the zip is the same size as the files inside, plus a little for the sidecars.
The unpacked folder. Another full copy. Unzipping does not delete the zip, so while you unpack, both exist. This alone means you need twice the download size free.
The organized library. If you rename the photos and sort them into year and month folders in a new place, that is a third copy. Most tools copy rather than move, because moving in place is risky and because you may want to run again with different settings.
So the safe number is three times the export. The minimum is two, and you can get to two only if you organize in place or delete the zips before organizing.
A few things change the size on the way. HEIC to JPG makes each converted file 1.5 to 2 times larger, so a HEIC-heavy library grows in the organized copy. Album folders in the export hold duplicates of photos that are also in the year folders, so the organized copy is often smaller than the unpacked one once those are written only once. Re-wrapping old MOV videos to MP4 does not change their size; re-encoding genuinely old codecs usually shrinks them.
Which drive
The internal drive is fastest, and unpacking a hundred thousand small files is slow on anything else. If it has three times the room, use it and move the finished library afterwards.
If not, an external SSD is the next best thing. A spinning external drive works but takes hours longer on the unzip. Whatever you use, check its format. FAT32 refuses any file over 4 GB, which stops a 10 GB zip and some long videos. exFAT has no such limit and reads on Mac, Windows and Linux, so it is the right format for a drive that moves between machines. NTFS is fine on Windows and read-only on a Mac without extra software.
You can also split the copies across drives: zips on the internal disk, unpack to the external, organize back to a folder on the internal once the zips are deleted. It is more juggling but it halves what each drive needs.
A NAS over the network is fine for the final library and terrible for the unpacking. Do the work on a local drive and copy the result across at the end.
When you cannot get to twice the size
Work one part at a time. Each Takeout zip is independent. Unpack part one, fix its dates, move the results to the library, delete the unpacked folder, and go to part two. You only ever need room for one part unpacked. The catch is that a photo's sidecar is usually in the same part as the photo but not always, so a few photos will have no sidecar until you have done every part. Run a final pass over the library for those.
Or unpack everything, verify that the folder opened cleanly, and delete the zips before organizing. This gets you to two copies. The zips are your only untouched backup, so only do this if the download links are still live, within seven days, so you can get them again if something goes wrong.
Or organize in place. The photos are renamed and moved into new folders inside the same top-level folder, with no second copy. It is the most space-efficient and the least forgiving; keep a safety copy of at least the sidecars until you have checked the result.
What happens when the disk fills
Unzipping stops with an error, and the last file written is usually cut short. The folder looks complete but a few photos at the end are damaged or missing, and nothing tells you which. On Windows the built-in extractor sometimes reports success anyway.
A metadata tool that runs out of space mid-write can leave a half-written photo. Most tools write to a temporary file and swap it in, so the original survives, but not all do. exiftool keeps a _original copy unless you tell it not to, which doubles the space it needs during the run.
The recovery is the same in every case. Delete the partial output, free space, and start that step again from the zips. This is why you keep the zips until the end.
The app
Takeout JSON Metadata Fixer checks space before it starts.
When you select the zips, it adds up what the unpacked files and the organized output will need and compares that with the free space on the drives involved. If there is not enough, it tells you how much is missing before a single file is written, rather than at part thirty of forty-five.
You choose where the output goes, so it can be a different drive from the zips. You can organize a folder in place, with an optional "Originals (before organizing)" folder that keeps the untouched files beside the result if you have the room, or without it if you do not. Photos that appear in several album folders are written once. It can also write straight to a USB stick or an Android phone.
Dry run shows what would be written without writing it. Runs on macOS, Windows and Linux, offline. Free for 500 photos, $9.99 once for unlimited.
Frequently asked questions
Can I unzip directly onto a USB stick?
If it is exFAT and has the room, yes, but it will be slow. Unpack on the internal drive and copy the organized result to the stick. The USB stick guide covers keeping dates intact on the way.
Does deleting the .json files save space?
Very little. A sidecar is one or two kilobytes. Sixty thousand of them are about 100 MB. Delete them for tidiness after the dates are written into the photos, not for space.
The zips together are bigger than my Google storage said. Why?
Album folders hold copies. A photo in three albums is in the export four times. The organized library will be closer to the storage number once duplicates are written once.
Is it safe to delete the export once the new library is checked?
Yes, after you have checked dates and places on a sample of photos in the new library. Keep the zips a few weeks anyway. They are the only copy with every sidecar.