Migrating file shares to Google drive

[tj2419]

We are looking to start migrating local shared drives to Google drive. It is backed by SLT and we've been asked to come up with a plan. The current lockdown has shown staff how useful and flexible Google drive can be.

 

My main questions are:

 

What is the best way to migrate shared drives to Google drive?

 

Have you done it? How did you do it?

 

What did you learn/find out? Would you do it differently now?

 

Any problems you have run into?

 

Have you had any issues around number of files in a team drive or folder depth? E.g. the 400,000 file limit on a team drive or the 20 folder depth limit.

 

https://support.google.com/a/answer/7338880?hl=en

 

I have seen options from:

- making shared drives read only so content migrates over time.

- copying everything over at once to a single team drive.

- copying everything to a staging team drive and then getting departments to copy over to where they want it.

 

Any advice would be great. Thank you

[southhamster]

Work with SLT to devise a new folder structure and then get everyone to move what they want to the new structure.

We also sync our folders back to the local drive so we have a local copy/backup as well. We set a clear date for it to be archived.

I'm getting requests from staff at home who want stuff off the old drive which can be when they aren't sure exactly where it is!

Overall it's worked very well and got staff using Google docs etc to edit shared docs.

[caffrey]

I'm wanting to do this too, currently as an experiment I'm uploading the staff area to a shared drive and there's tonnes of stuff in there that goes back years and it's taking forever to sync (I'm manually copying things over) to be honest it's an absolute mess. I think the option of starting from scratch looks a lot better but I'd have to get everyone on board. Either create one shared drive with departments in there or just create single departmental shared drives

[smurfomatic]

We did this a few years back, so had the luxury (!) of time. I took the existing "Staff Share" network drive, moved out all files that hadn't been accessed in over a year, then gave everyone a term to let me know if anything was missing. All files still archived so easy to retrieve if needed.

 

Then I copied over everything I could onto a Google shared drive. The only things that had to remain on our server was password protected Excel spreadsheets (which won't upload to Google Drive) and past exam papers which had strict rules on where they can be stored.

 

The initial upload had streamlined the folder structure down to five main folders - Academic, Admin, Inspection, Pastoral and Policies. Obviously it didn't stay that neat for long!

 

We now have a miriad of other shared drives, set up by staff and only including those who need access.

[tj2419]

I'm wanting to do this too, currently as an experiment I'm uploading the staff area to a shared drive and there's tonnes of stuff in there that goes back years and it's taking forever to sync (I'm manually copying things over) to be honest it's an absolute mess. I think the option of starting from scratch looks a lot better but I'd have to get everyone on board. Either create one shared drive with departments in there or just create single departmental shared drives

Most of our departments have started setting up their own shared google drives plus with the file limit per shared drive I think we will have department drives and a central staff drive just for whole school resources.

[caffrey]

I would've pursued this a lot earlier (we've been using Gsuite since 2013) but team \ shared drives is still relatively fresh , Like you since current events I think people are realising the potential so I may be able to push it more. The original staff drive was \ is hallowed ground but I reckon I could dump 80% of it without anyone noticing.

 

 

*edit* forgot to mention I'm syncing using File Stream,

 

Ultimate aim is not to have any mapped drives (except for some key staff and legacy apps) and just the one drive letter via file stream which contains My Drive and Shared Folders.

Edited May 8, 2020 by caffrey

[keyboards]

Well you won't folder level permissions, I dumped 200GB out of our staff drive last summer and no-one noticed..

[XiJ]

When I’ve done this I’ve typically

 

 

Created a new drive

 

Copy over last years worth of work

 

Make existing staff share a read only archive which the staff have access to for X amount of time

 

Remove original share (I’ll keep that archived somewhere but not give staff access)

[tj2419]

How do you filter out the last year's worth of work?

[Michael]

Best advice from previous experience is -

 

Configure a VM running Windows 10 and install File Stream. This'll be your mechanism to migrate data in chunks, depending on your connectivity speeds as File Stream officially cannot be installed on Windows Server.

 

Migrate shares 'as is' and thereafter split them up or create new shared areas as required.

[The_IT_Guy]

Can anyone recommend a tool for syncing straight from local share into shared drives in google? It seems Google's backup and sync tool only allows you to sync to "My Drive".

[gh5000]

Best advice from previous experience is -

 

Configure a VM running Windows 10 and install File Stream. This'll be your mechanism to migrate data in chunks, depending on your connectivity speeds as File Stream officially cannot be installed on Windows Server.

 

Migrate shares 'as is' and thereafter split them up or create new shared areas as required.

You've been able to install on a server OS for a while. It snuck in about half a year ago.

[gh5000]

How do you filter out the last year's worth of work?

Robocopy has date filters

[caffrey]

Use this

 

robocopy "Source" "destination" /S /MAXAGE:730 /COPYALL /R:10 /W:30 /XF "Thumbs.db"

 

I have 730 days there (2 years)

[caffrey]

Can anyone recommend a tool for syncing straight from local share into shared drives in google? It seems Google's backup and sync tool only allows you to sync to "My Drive".

 

Just use filestream

[Michael]

You've been able to install on a server OS for a while. It snuck in about half a year ago.

 

It never occurred to me to look at the requirements. File Stream could previously work on Windows Server, but it was the installer that prevented so making it a faff.

 

Even so I think I'd still run it from a Windows 10 VM, so it leaves your server free to process other services.

[TwistedHelixis]

Can anyone recommend a tool for syncing straight from local share into shared drives in google? It seems Google's backup and sync tool only allows you to sync to "My Drive".

 

Once its in My drive its just a case of drag n drop to a shared drive.

 

I moved 90% of our server files doing this.

[caffrey]

One little gotcha, make sure you have plenty of space on your c: drive as it caches to that before syncing, e.g. if you only have 20GB free you can only upload 20GB at a time...

[gh5000]

One little gotcha, make sure you have plenty of space on your c: drive as it caches to that before syncing, e.g. if you only have 20GB free you can only upload 20GB at a time...

Or change the cache location. But yes a good think to consider.