The techniques disclosed herein provide adaptive storage techniques for maximizing the available storage space of a file storage system. An adaptable multi-phase storage management process may involve a background process and a user process. The background process can autonomously offload files that comply with a confidence level defined in a storage policy. The user process can selectively offload files based on a user response to a prompt identifying specific files that do not comply with the confidence level. Continual adjustments can be made to the storage based on user activity that allows a system to make more accurate determinations on the selection of operations for increasing the available storage space of a system.