Personal Storage Options

Backing up or Migrating your Data

Google Takeout

For most users over the threshold, you can use Google Takeout to transfer data into a personal Google account, another cloud service, or back it up locally. The Google Takeout service works only for "My Drive" and email. If you also have a separate Shared Drive, please refer to the "Moving files out of Shared Drives" section.

Note: If you use multiple Gmail accounts, it may be best to perform these actions in different browser sessions. If not, you could initiate actions on the wrong account.

Transfer to another Gmail account

This process will transfer emails and Drive data into your personal storage service. The personal account should have enough room to accommodate this transfer. Otherwise, this process will fail.

1. While signed into your Brown Google account, go to https://takeout.google.com/transfer
2. Follow steps to authorize the transfer.
3. You will receive confirmation that the transfer has started. Once it has been completed you should receive an email.
4. Once complete, you should confirm that your files were copied successfully from your alumni account to your personal storage.

Download your data or transfer it to another service

In cases where data other than emails and Drive needs to be backed up, or if another Google account isn't available, you can use Google Takeout to download your files locally or move them into another cloud service.

1. While signed into your Brown Google account, go to https://takeout.google.com/
2. Make sure to select all product data you'd need to back up.
3. Click Next step.
4. In the Transfer to selection, choose appropriately. You can either receive a link to download your files or start a process to move them into another Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, or Box.
5. Make sure Frequency is set to Export once.
6. With all other settings the same, click Create export.
7. Once this process is started, you can check back at this link to view the progress of your Takeout.

Google Photos

You can follow this support article on how to move your Google Photos to a personal Google account.

Mover.io

Mover.io is a data migration service that can transfer files from various cloud services into OneDrive. This service will request authorization to access your Brown Google account and your personal Microsoft account to perform a data transfer.

Mover.io is a Microsoft service and requires a personal Microsoft account. OneDrive must have enough free storage to import data being exported from Google. 

Rclone

Rclone is a command line program that can be used to manage files on various cloud storage services.

Rclone is a tool meant for advanced users. Documentation for this service is available on their site.

Moving files out of Shared Drives

The best method to migrate data out of a Google Shared Drive is to move your data into a personal Gmail account.

1. Add your personal Gmail account as a Manager on your shared drive.
2. Using your personal Gmail account, access the shared drive.
3. Select files or folders and drag them into your personal Drive.

Your personal account will now be the owner of the files, reducing your Shared Drive utilization.

Shared Drive utilization

You can check your Shared Drive's utilization. To do this:

1. Go to the Shared Drive section of Google Drive.
2. Select the shared drive you'd like to inspect.
3. Click on the (i) symbol on the top right-hand side .
4. You should now see Storage Used on the right-hand side.

Final steps...

Delete, delete, delete.

Once you've confirmed that your data has been backed up or moved to another service, you can safely delete your data to get your account under quota.

Drive

For My Drive and Shared Drives, you can trash files by right-clicking them and selecting "Move to trash" or by dragging them into the Trash folder. You'll be able to access and restore files from 30 days after you've moved them into Trash. After that, they'll be permanently deleted. 

You can delete trashed files earlier. Just access your Trash folder, select your files, and click on "Empty trash". Trashed Shared Drive files are held in their Trash folder. Access a Shared Drive then click on Trash to view trashed files.

Gmail

As with Drive, you can select emails and delete them to move them into the Trash folder. Emails will stay in Trash for 30 days before being permanently deleted. You can delete trashed files sooner by deleting them from within the Trash folder. You can delete all of your trash by clicking on "Empty Trash now" at the top of the Trash folder.

Photos

Google Photos also count against your quota. Similar to other services, move files into Trash that you want to delete.  Photos remain in the Trash for 60 days unless permanently deleted. You can purge your Trash folder immediately by clicking on "Emtpy trash" at the top of your Trash folder.

Note: Trashed files, emails and photos count against your storage quota until permanently deleted.