If you haven’t yet, review the Google Workspace Migrate best practices first.
Before you migrate content from file shares, review the following points.
| Large single-user migrations |
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| A migration of 400,000 files or more to one user's Google Drive account requires extra planning. Use a sharding users list to spread the migration load among many user accounts.
To determine the number of user accounts to add to the list, use the larger value of:
We recommend you set up temporary Google Workspace users for your sharding users list. Then, delete the users after you complete the migration. For details, see Create a sharding users list. |
| Migration phases |
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| Content shared with users outside of your organization |
| If users or groups outside of your organization have a Google Account, you can add them to Drive files and folders and migrate sharing permissions. External users or groups without a Google Account can automatically receive an email with a custom access link at migration time.
To reduce the amount of time that users without a Google Account have access to shared files and folders:
Tip: Use the Permissions by Object report to identify externally shared objects before a migration. For details, go to Understand file share scan reports. |
| Migrating to shared drives |
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| Restricted permissions |
| Restricted permissions (where a child file or folder has fewer permissions than its parent) are not supported by shared drives. If the file or folder has restricted permissions on the source account, the restricted permissions are not migrated. |
| Access level in Drive |
If you're migrating content to Drive, the target user must have the correct access level before you start the migration:
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| Running test migrations to Drive |
| If you delete items in the target Drive account following a test migration, make sure to empty the trash before rerunning the migration. Google Workspace Migrate tracks items by ID and will restore items from the target account's trash if you run the migration again.
Emptying the trash avoids this issue and allows you to run a fresh migration. |
| Migrating files & folders to multiple locations in Drive |
Google Workspace Migrate attempts to remigrate a file or folder to a new location in Drive if:
The outcome of the remigration depends on the item’s existing and new locations. If both locations are in My Drive or in the same shared drive, the item is moved to the new location. Otherwise, the item is not moved and the transaction fails with error code 1081344. |
| Access to shared drives on target account |
| If the original content authors don’t have access to the shared drives on the target account, files are transferred using the target GUser account specified in the mapping. This type of transfer can create bottlenecks and slow a migration.
We recommend that you:
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Next step
Now it's time to set up a connection. To get started, see Add or edit a file share connection.
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