Transfer Google Drive files to another Google account
Copy or move a whole Drive, or one folder, from one Google account to another without downloading it first. Works for personal accounts and Workspace alike.
Why not download and re-upload
Downloading everything and uploading it again works for a few gigabytes. Past that it is limited by your home connection twice over, needs the disk space to hold it all in between, and stops whenever the laptop sleeps. A server-side transfer streams the files from one account to the other on our servers: nothing touches your machine, and the job keeps running after you close the tab.
Google's own "transfer ownership" only works between accounts in the same Workspace organisation, and Google Takeout gives you archives to download, not files in the new account. Copying between the two accounts is what works everywhere.
Steps
- On the Clouds screen, add Google Drive and sign in with the old account.
- Add Google Drive again and sign in with the new account. Each appears as its own cloud.
- In the explorer, open the old account in the left pane and the folder in the new account you want it in on the right.
- Choose Copy to keep the original, or Move to empty the old account as it goes, and start.
- Repeat for Shared with me and each shared drive if you want those too: they are separate roots, not part of My Drive.
What arrives, and what does not
- Every ordinary file is checked by MD5 once it lands, since both sides are Google Drive. A corrupted or truncated file is caught rather than assumed good.
- Google Docs, Sheets and Slides arrive as Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. Google opens them directly, and converts them back to Google format when you choose to.
- Sharing, comments and version history stay with the old account. Business migration carries sharing and versions where both sides support them.
- Drive allows two files with the same name in one folder. Only one of each such pair is copied, so rename duplicates first if you need both.
- The new account accepts at most 750 GB of uploads a day. A move bigger than that runs over several days; a schedule that runs daily is the easy way to do it.
Questions
Does the old account need to stay signed in?
Only connected, not signed in anywhere. The transfer uses the access you granted when you added it, and you can remove that access afterwards from the Clouds screen or from your Google account.
Can I move from a personal Gmail account to a Workspace account?
Yes. Both are Google Drive to us; the steps are the same.
Try it
Prepaid: 30 GB free, then 500 GB for ₹100 or 2,500 GB for ₹500, each valid a year. No card is asked for to start.