Migrating Google Drive Data to a Different Google Account via Shared Folder

This guide walks you through a method to migrate your Booth Google Drive files to another Google account efficiently, ensuring that your documents remain accessible after graduation from Booth.

As an alumnus with access to a Booth Alumni email account, you can manage this migration effort on your own.*

*Note: this approach works for migration between Booth accounts and an external Google account.  This does not work if your external account is Microsoft OneDrive or other non-Google accounts.

Setup

1. If you do not have a personal or other professional Google account (referred to as “external account”), you will need to obtain one that is large enough to hold all the data you need.
2. Create a Shared Folder in Booth Google Drive.
   1. If you are migrating more than 100GB, you will need to contact the Help Desk to request an exception on the maximum shared folder policy.

3. Once you create and name your folder, you should see it in the left menu pane.  You can name the folder whatever you want; in this example, we have named it “Data Migration”.

4. Click Manage Members to Invite your external account as a “Manager”. 
   1. You may be asked if you want to “share anyway” when you add a non-Booth account.  This is expected; select “Yes” to proceed.

5. You should now see the number of people the folder has been shared with in the shared folder status.

6. Log into your external account’s Google Drive and make sure you see the Shared Drive listed there in the same left pane.

Migration from Booth Account

The first step is doing some housekeeping.  Cloud storage solutions like Google Drive can easily become disorganized with outdated files, redundant copies of files, and other areas of wasted space.  By cleaning up your file directories in your Booth’s Google Drive, you can:

• Reduce space needed on the external account
• Reduce the time it takes to migrate
• Help your data be more organized and usable

Take some time to review your directories. Delete items you no longer need or are duplicates, and organize other items into a folder structure that makes sense to your situation. Once your housekeeping has been completed, follow the steps below to move files:

1. In your Booth account, view the content of your My Drive as well as the available shared drives.
   1. In this example, we have a folder in My Drive named “Migrate Data” from which we want to migrate the contents to the shared drive so we can then move that to our external account.

2. Highlight the folder that contains the files you want to migrate.
   1. Per the below, we see the contents in the main window of the individual files we want to migrate.  You can move these over either one at a time or by selecting a group of them by highlighting the first file, holding Shift, and then clicking the last one.

3. Drag and drop selected files from Booth folder into the shared folder you created.
4. Upon receiving the following “Change ownership” warning, select “Move”.

5. After a few moments, you will notice that the files have been moved.  When you then highlight the shared drive, you will see the files that have been migrated.

Migration to External Account

Log into your external Google Drive account and follow these steps.

1. Open the shared folder.  You will see the files you want to continue migrating.
2. Create a folder in your external account.
   1. In this example, we have a folder we named “Booth Files”.

3. Drag and drop the content of the Shared drive to the new “Booth Files” folder in your external account.
4. You will get another pop-up asking if you want to make yourself the new owner; select “Move” to proceed.

5. Wait a few moments for the files to move, then check to verify the files are in the folder in your external account.
6. After 24 hours, login into your Booth Google account and check your storage use as shown below.*
   1. *Note: Google Drive can take up to a day to normalize your storage availability. If you access more immediately, it may appear that the same amount of space is still being used. As such, we recommend waiting 24 hours following any efforts to decrease your storage to see your Google Drive usage adjusted to the actual space being utilized.

7. Continue the migration process until you have moved all the files desired.

Once done, you can log into your Booth account, right-click on the Shared Drive, and select “Delete Shared Drive”.  You will get an “Are you sure?” pop-up; to confirm and proceed, simply click “Delete shared drive” to complete the migration.

Shared Items

In your Google Drive, you may find that there are shared items that do not actually belong to you.  These are files that are owned by others that have been shared with you. They do not count against your storage quota, and can either be kept or deleted.*

*Note: deleting only removes your link to the shared item. It does not delete the owner’s file.