Need to know how to transfer Google Drive to another account? This guide covers all you need to transfer everything from one Google Drive to another. Follow our comprehensive instructions with 9 methods to migrate your files efficiently and safely.
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Google Drive, launched on April 24, 2012, is a file storage and synchronization service created by Google. You are allowed to store & access files in the cloud, share files, and edit documents, spreadsheets, images, videos, and presentations with collaborators. It is accessible through a web browser on computers or dedicated apps for Android and iOS mobile devices.
Google Drive also offers search functionality and integrates with many other Google services, such as Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. As for the storage space, it provides every user with 15GB for free, which is shared across Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos. To get more storage space, you have to pay for a subscription or sign up for multiple Google Drive accounts.
As mentioned before, Google Drive offers only 15 GB of free space for you. Although it seems more generous than other famous cloud drives such as OneDrive, Dropbox, Box, etc, this space is shared by your files on Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos. So, when you hit the storage limit on one of your Google Drive accounts, but don't want to pay for an account upgrade, you might need to move Google Drive to another account. In addition, there are many other possible reasons why you need to do that, including:
In this article, we will discuss how to move your data from one Google Drive account to another, either manually or automatically. So, just keep reading.
First of all, we will show you the automatic ways to transfer Google Drive to another account, using the web-based cloud storage manager -MultCloud. It puts all the clouds you have into one place for easy centralized management. It allows you to transfer files across cloud drives directly in one interface without downloading and uploading. Additionally, you don't need to worry about privacy security since the authorization system of MultCloud is based on OAuth.
Compared to other cloud transfer tools in the market, MutCloud owns more highlights, such as:
MultCloud is very easy to use and it won't require you to have technical knowledge. To migrate Google Drive to another account, you have to create one MultCloud account and add both accounts to MultCloud so that you can start the Google Drive data migration. Below is how to do it via its 4 different features according to your different demands: "Cloud Transfer", "Copy to", "Share", and "Team Transfer".
If you want to copy Google Drive folder to another account, you can make full use of "Cloud Transfer", this function is more suitable if you want to transfer everything from one Google Drive to another. Also, transferring some certain folders or files is also OK.
Here is how to transfer Google Drive data to another Google Drive with MultCloud's Cloud Transfer:
Step 1. Create an account first. Or you can log in with your Google or Facebook account. (Note: For every user, MultCloud will provide free 5GB data traffic every month.)
Step 2. Click the "Add Cloud" button and select Google Drive from the list to add your old account. Then follow the steps to grant access to MultCloud. Use the same way to add your new Google Drive account.
Note: You can change the Display Name to Google Drive1 to distinguish it from your old Google Drive account.
Step 3. Click on "Cloud Transfer" on the left side. In the "FROM" box, choose the source Google Drive while selecting the target Google Drive in the "TO" box.
Step 4. Then click "Transfer Now" to move all Google Drive files to another account.
Notes before migrating:
How to transfer Google Drive to another account using the "Copy to" feature? This method is mainly for the situation where the same user uses different Google Drive accounts.
Step 1. Open your old Google Drive account on MultCloud, and click the checkbox next to the "File Name" to select all files. Choose "Copy to" from the top menu to move files from one Google Drive to another.
Step 4. Select the second Google Drive as the destination location. Click the "OK" button to copy files from one Google Drive to another.
Notes:
The above method can only transfer the data to the Google Drive account by the same user. When the two Google Drive accounts are not owned by the same person, for example, you want to share the private data in your Google Drive account with friends. In this situation, how to transfer files from one Google Drive to another easily? Don't worry, the "Share" function in MultCloud can help you complete this assignment.
Step 1. Before Google Drive file sharing, both you and your friend need to register a MultCloud account.
Step 2. After you and your friend log in to the MultCloud account, you add your own Google Drive account to your MultCloud account, and your friend adds their Google Drive account to the MultCloud account they created.
Step 3. After both parties have successfully added the Google Drive accounts, find the file want to share in your Google Drive account, right-click the file, and select "Share" in the pop-up window. Finally, choose a sharing mode you like, if it is a private file, you can choose to create a "Private Share".
Notes:
Step 4. Share the above link and password with your friend. When your friend opens this link, they will be asked to enter the password you sent. Then they can select "Save to Cloud" to move Google Drive folder to another account.
Note: If your friend does not want to save the file to the cloud drive temporarily, they can also download the data directly to the local device without creating an account.
If you are planning to move files from Google Drive to another account that belongs to different organizations, Team Transfer can help you out of this trouble. Team Transfer allows you to move all sub-accounts from one business cloud to another business cloud directly with everything transferred. here is how it works:
Important: Make sure everything is ok to migrate files from one Google Workspace to another Google account.
1. Please add your Google Workspace accounts to your MultCloud account after signing in.
2. Click Team Transfer, hit Add Source Cloud to choose one Google Workspace, and hit Add Target Cloud to tick another Google Workspace.
3. All the sub-accounts will be listed, and pair them: tap Batch Match and choose a way to pair the accounts belonging to different organizations.
4. Hit the Transfer Now to transfer Google Drive to another account outside the organization.
Now, we would like to share you with how to transfer a Google Drive to another account manually. That is using the "Share" option in Google Drive, utilizing Google Takeout, and Google Admin console as well as downloading and re-uploading.
If you have Google documents format only on Google Drive, then you can transfer them to your new account by the "Share" feature.
Step 1. Log in to your old Google Drive account. Select all files you want to export to another Google Drive account right-click and choose the "Share" button.
Step 2. Add your new account's email address as a collaborator. Click "Done", then you can set the read and write permissions of this account to the file.
Step 3. Click down the arrow icon and select "Editor" from the drop-down menu and click the "Send" button.
Step 4. Log in to your second account and you will find these files are placed under "Shared with me" of your account.
If you have other file formats on Google Drive and you want to transfer these files from one Google Drive to another, you can download a copy of your data or create an archive with Google Takeout. It is a service offered by Google to help users create an archive of their data so that it can be transferred to other accounts with ease.
If you take this method, the files’ formats will be converted to another format. Once your new account has been set up, you can automatically convert all these back by adjusting your upload settings in the drive.
Step 1. Go to the official site of Google Takeout and log in to your accounts. Step 2. Select Google Drive (the old account) to export and click on the "Next step" button.
Step 3. Select a delivery method. Here you need to select "Add to Drive" from the drop-down window. Otherwise, "Send download link via email" will be selected by default.
Step 4. Then click on "Create export" and wait for the process to complete. Then, you should first download these compressed files to the local storage, then decompress them, and finally, upload all the files to another Google Drive account.
Notes:
This method might be the most common one for most users, especially those who do not have enough knowledge of cloud drive management and transfer. If you just plan to move a few files from one Google Drive to another account, consider using this method.
Step 1. Log in to your old account and create a new folder to store all files under the root directory of your Google Drive. Step 2. Move all files to the new folder. (or you can skip the "new folder creation" process and directly select every single file one by one). Step 3. Right-click the new folder, click the "Download" button, and wait for the process to complete.
Step 4. Log in to your new account, click the "Upload files" feature to upload that downloaded .zip file, and wait for the process to complete.
Note: If you want to upload compressed files to your Google Drive, you need to unzip them first so you can click "Upload Folder" to upload them to your new Google Drive account.
Apart from using the Google Drive official site to download and upload files between different accounts, you can also use the Desktop App to transfer Google Drive to another account. This method involves downloading and installing Desktop for Drive application.
Step 1. Download and install Google Drive Desktop Application.
Step 2. Link the source and destination Google Drive account into the app.
Step 3. When both accounts are added successfully, you will see them in your Windows File Explorer.
Step 4. Then you can open those two drives in separate windows. You can directly drag files from the source Google Drive, and drop into the destination Google Drive.
There is still another way for you to transfer Google Drive to another account within your organization, using the Google Admin Console. You can transfer ownership to another Google Drive account when the current owner's account is still active, then you can delete the Google Drive account because all files and folders have been transferred to another account.
Important:
1. Click Admin Console on the bottom left of your Google Drive admin account after logging in.
2. Select Apps > Google Workspace > Drive and Docs > Transfer ownership.
3. Enter the email address of the current owner in the "From user" field. Enter the email address of the new owner in the "To user" field.
4. Click "Transfer Files" to initiate the ownership transfer.
5. Wait for the transfer to complete, and all parties involved (the new owner, the previous owner, and the initiating admin) will receive a confirmation email.
Please be aware that transferring ownership of numerous files and folders simultaneously may require some time to reflect the changes. Then you can delete the user from Google Workspace.
The above manual methods do help you transfer Google Drive to another account, even outside the organization, but they are a bit complicated and you have to perform every step individually. Besides that, they come with the following obvious disadvantages:
Any method above can help you transfer Google Drive to another account, but some of the methods are kinda complicated and require you to perform every step individually. If you want to make it as easy as possible, MultCloud is a better choice. Transfer Google Drive to another account outside the organization or within your organization. Besides Google Drive, MultCloud supports other 30+ clouds, including Google Photos, iCloud Photos, SharePoint, G Suite, 4Shared, MEGA, Gmail, OneDrive, Dropbox, Flickr, Google Photos, etc.
Apart from the above-mentioned features, MultCloud provides "Cloud Backup", "Cloud Sync" and "Remote Upload" functions. "Cloud Backup" is designed to back up one cloud data to another cloud. If you want to sync two Google Drive accounts, you can make full use of "Cloud Sync". For "Remote Upload", you can use this feature to directly download files through parsing torrent files or magnet links to cloud drives.