1. BitTitan Help Center
  2. Perform a Migration
  3. Google Workspace Migrations
  4. Google Drive and Google Shared Drive Document Migrations

Google Drive to Google Drive Migration Guide

This article will guide you through the steps for migrating folders and documents from one Google Drive instance to another Google Drive instance. This guide contains all the steps necessary for performing the migration. To find out more information on Google Drive migrations, troubleshooting, and credentials, see our Google Drive Migrations FAQ. 

First time?

This migration guide contains the necessary steps to perform the actual migration, but there are many steps to preparing for migration. If this is your first time performing a migration, we have created a Migration Planning & Strategy Guide to walk you through planning, set-up, and general migration best practices. If you have never performed a migration before, we suggest reading that before beginning the steps outlined in this scenario.

MigrationWiz

MigrationWiz is a migration tool, not a syncing tool. If changes are made at the source after migration, they will not sync to the destination, nor will changes made at the destination sync to the source. We do not have “live” monitoring of changes (as with a sync agent) and we cannot handle scenarios such as conflict resolution without user interaction.

Prerequisites

Licensing

We recommend that you purchase User Migration Bundle licenses for this migration scenario. User Migration Bundle licenses allow the performance of multiple migrations with a single license. For questions on licensing, visit MigrationWiz Licenses.

Use your license by following the next steps:

  1. Purchase Licenses.
  2. Create a Customer.
  3. Apply Licenses.
  4. Review Considerations.
Purchase Licenses Create a Customer Apply Licenses Considerations

Purchase licenses by following the steps below:

  1. Sign in to your BitTitan account. 
  2. In the top navigation bar, click Purchase.
  3. Click the Select button and choose User Migration Bundle licenses.
  4. Enter the number of licenses you want to purchase. Click Buy Now.
  5. Enter a Billing address if applicable.
  6. Click Next.
  7. Review the Order Summary and enter a payment method.
  8. Click Place Your Order.

Limitations

Please consider the following limitations for this type of migration:

  • Items and folders in "Shared with Me" will not be migrated. Only items in "My Drive" will be migrated. To migrate "Shared with Me" items, they must be added to "My Drive".
  • We are not able to support the use of Admin accounts that use two-factor or multifactor authentication.
  • The maximum file size for migration through MigrationWiz varies by migration type and environment, but may never exceed 60GB.

Migrated Items

Please click the bars below to check the migrated and non-migrated items. We are constantly working to create a better migration experience for you so these items may change over time.

Which items are migrated?
  • Folders
  • Folders you have shared
  • Permissions
  • G Suite native files
  • Code Files
  • Documents
  • Images
  • Executables
  • Videos
  • Audio Files
  • Templates (files that the template had been applied to are migrated)
  • Creation Date (Creation date gets changed to the "date of migration" date)
  • Scripts/Macros (Scripts are not converted to macros when going to documents)
  • Document History
  • Comments
  • File/Folder permissions
  • Items/folders in "Shared with Me”. These folders must be added to the user’s “My Drive” and the advanced option “DocumentBrowsingMode=FullCopy” must be enabled.
  • Shortcuts (Migrated in Google Drive to Google Drive scenarios only.)
  • Migrations of over 15GB are now supported, but this must be set up in Advanced Options.
Which items are not migrated?
  • Google Shared Drives (also known as Team Drives) are not supported with this migration type. To migrate Shared Drives, see the migration guide for that scenario. 

    • This is largely because Shared Drives uses a different root folder than Google Drive does. Shared Drives also follow different organization, sharing, and ownership models, so the same methods used to migrate Google Drive will not work to migrate Shared Drives.

  • Personal Free Google Drive is not supported
  • File/folder shortcuts
  • Google Photos

Prepare the Source Environment

This endpoint requires your tenant service account to be set up and Google APIs to be enabled. Follow the steps below to set up your environment for this endpoint. 

Prerequisites

  • Subscription to Google Cloud Platform.
  • Google Super Administrator account. The domain of this account must match the project's user domain. This is required for both the source and destination.
  • Ability to set up a service account on the G Suite tenant.
  • A service account must be set up before the MigrationWiz project is created.
  • All accounts being migrated must be in Active status in the tenant. Inactive users will not be able to fully migrate and will fail in the project.

Create a Google Project

  1. Go to the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Console and sign in as a super administrator. Choose one of the options below:

    • If you haven't used the Google Cloud Platform Console before, agree to the Terms of Service and click Create Project.

    • If you have used Google Cloud Platform Console before, at the top of the screen next to your most recent project name, click Down to open your projects list. Then, click New Project.

  2. Enter a project name and click Create.

  3. When the new project creation completes, at the top of the screen next to the current project name, click the Down icon and select the newly created project name from the list.

If you are not able to create a project here, it may be that the ability to create projects has been disabled for your tenant. To check this, navigate to the Google Admin Center, click on Apps > Additional Google Services, and select the Google Cloud Platform. Once there, you should see a setting that can be toggled to allow users to create projects.

Enable APIs for Service Account

  1. From the Google Cloud Platform Console, click Menu > APIs & Services > Library.

  2. Enable the following APIs by selecting the specific API and clicking Enable.
    Repeat for each API listed below:
    • Google Drive API
    • Admin SDK

Make sure that the respective services are enabled within the Google tenant. You can control services for your users using the instructions on this page: Control who can access G Suite and Google Services.

Create a Customer Tenant Service Account

  1. From the Google Cloud Platform Console, click Menu > IAM & Admin > Service accounts.
  2. Click + Create Service Account at the top middle of the screen and enter a name.
  3. Click Create.
  4. Assign the role of Owner to the new Service Account by selecting Owner from the Role drop-down menu.
  5. Click Continue to move to the next step, then click the Done button.
  6. You will now be returned to the "Service Accounts" page. 
  7. On the ‘Service accounts' page, click the vertical ellipsis under the 'Actions’ column for the service account created above.
  8. Click on the Create key.
  9. Make sure that JSON is selected as "Key Type."
  10. Click Create.
  11. Click Close.

Make sure that you download the key as a JSON file and make a note of the name and location of the file. This JSON file will be used when setting up the migration endpoint in the Mailbox Migration project.

The JSON file must contain information in the following fields: “type”, “private key”, and “client email”. If these mandatory fields are empty the file upload during endpoint creation will fail.<></>

Setting the Scopes for the Migration

From the Google Cloud Platform Console:

  1. Click Menu.
  2. Click IAM & Admin.
  3. Click Service Accounts.
  4. Find the service account that was set up in Step 3: Create a Customer Tenant Account.

    Important

    This field often needs to be added to the view. To do so, click on the Column display options button, add a checkmark to Unique ID, and then click OK.
    Find and copy the service account's Unique ID number. This is the Client ID number that will be used in a later step.
    This Client ID should be considered similar to Administrator account passwords and handled securely. 

You will now have one of two options, depending on if the Google UI has been updated in your tenant. 

Classic Google UI New Google UI
  1. Go to the G Suite admin page at admin.google.com
  2. Click Security > Access and Data Controls > API Controls
  3. Under Domain-wide Delegation, click Manage domain-wide delegation.

 Once the steps are complete:

  1. In the Client ID field, paste the Unique ID copied above.
  2. In the OAuth scopes (comma-delimited) field, paste all scopes listed below for the source endpoint.
    https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.directory.group.readonly, https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.directory.user.readonly, https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.readonly
  3. Click Authorize.

 You should now see your specific Unique ID and the associate scopes listed.

Prepare the Destination Environment

Follow the same steps in the Prepare the Source Environment section but use the following OAuth scopes as listed below for the destination endpoint (must include read-write scopes).
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.directory.group,
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.directory.user, https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.directory.group.readonly,
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.directory.user.readonly, https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.readonly,
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive

MigrationWiz Steps

Create Document Project

To create a new migration project:

  1. Click the Go To My Projects button.
  2. Click the Create Project button.
  3. Under Project Type, select Document Project. Document projects are used to migrate document drives from one cloud storage to another. Document migrations will maintain the folder hierarchy from the source to the destination.
  4. Enter a Project name and select a Customer. If you have not already added the customer to MSPComplete, you will need to click New to create the Customer.
  5. Click Next Step.
  6. Select the JSON file created in the steps above and enter the Super Admin username and password for the source then select the source endpoint from the Endpoint dropdown list, or create a new source Google Drive (Own Service Account) endpoint.
  7. Click Next Step.
  8. Select the JSON file created in the steps above and enter the Super Admin username and password for the destination then select the destination Google Drive endpoint from the Endpoint dropdown list, or create a new Google Drive endpoint.
  9. Click Save and Go to Summary.
  10. Click the Save Project button.

Add Items

Add the accounts (also referred to as "items") that will be migrated to the project. There are several ways to do this. 

Quick Add
This option allows you to add items one at a time. To do so, you only have to provide an email address if you entered administrative credentials when setting up the project. If you did not, enter the following user information:
  • An email address
  • Login name
  • Password
  • Mailbox status
Bulk Add

Bulk Add uses a CSV containing the source and destination email addresses for the users to add the users to the project. If migrating only a specific group from a tenant, we recommend using the Bulk Add option.

MigrationWiz allows you to bulk import mailboxes into the system.

To import one or more mailboxes:

  1. Sign in to your MigrationWiz account.
  2. Select the Project for which you want to perform the bulk import.
  3. Click Add.
  4. Click Bulk Add.
  5. Follow the instructions on the page.
Autodiscover

The autodiscover process within MigrationWiz can be used to discover items from the Source environment so that they can be imported into your projects. This can then be edited in the project to remove users not being migrated. All users are added with the source and destination email addresses set to match the source email.

This can be changed by using the Change Domain Name button at the top of the project page. If the usernames are changing during the migration, we recommend using the Bulk Add option.

There are a few requirements for this to work:

  • The Source has to be Exchange 2007 or later, Microsoft Office 365, or G Suite. If you are using Autodiscover from G Suite, all G Suite domains must be added to the list of domains in the Endpoint.
  • The endpoint on the Source needs to use admin credentials.
  • The endpoint Administrator account on the source needs to be assigned the appropriate GSuite license for MigrationWiz to access Google Drive or Google Shared Drives for the Auto Discovery process.
  • For mailbox migration projects, the admin account that is specified within the Source endpoint needs to have a mailbox associated with it.
  • The admin mailbox must be listed in the public Global Address List (GAL).
  • The migration project type needs to be a Mailbox migration. For the exact steps to be followed during your migration, refer to the relevant Migration Guide. All Migration Guides can be found on the Help Center site.

One additional item to note here is that there is no way to restrict the IP addresses that the connection will come from.  This means that the steps outlined in our IP Lockdown guide will not apply here.  If your environment requires that any IP addresses be whitelisted, it is recommended that items be added to your project using one of the other available options.

Autodiscover of items will not work while using Modern Authentication

Autodiscovery exposes the following items:

  • For mailbox migration, autodiscovery will list all mailboxes at the Source.

Steps to Run Autodiscover

  1. Navigate to the project you want to import users into.

  2. Ensure that you have created an endpoint for the source project.

  3. Once in the project, on the top navigation bar, click on the Add drop-down, then select Autodiscover Items. This will begin the Autodiscover process.

  4. Once discovered, click on the Import button, to import the items into your MigrationWiz project.

Advanced Options

Set the Project Advanced Options. These are customization options that help MigrationWiz perform within specific environments. 

Support Tab

  • InitializationTimeout=8 - This increases the initialization timeout window to eight hours.
    This value is in hours, up to a maximum of 100 hours.  Values above 100 are in milliseconds. For example:​
    Hours:
    • InitializationTimeout=2 will increase the timeout to 2 hours.
    • InitializationTimeout=4 will increase the timeout to 4 hours.
    • InitializationTimeout=6 will increase the timeout to 6 hours.
    • InitializationTimeout=8 will increase the timeout to 8 hours.

    Milliseconds:

    • InitializationTimeout=7200000 will increase the timeout to 2 hours.
    • InitializationTimeout=14400000 will increase the timeout to 4 hours.
    • InitializationTimeout=21600000 will increase the timeout to 6 hours.
    • InitializationTimeout=28800000 will increase the timeout to 8 hours.

  • DocumentBrowsingMode - This option migrates items as long as the user is the owner of the folder. For more details, see the Google Drive Migrations FAQ article.

    • DocumentBrowsingMode=FullCopy - This option should be used for newer tenants, where "Add to My Drive" is not supported.
  • MapPermissionEmailByPairsInProject=1 - When this advanced option is used, MigrationWiz will automatically apply mapping based on the way emails are set up as line items in the project. For example, abc@source.com will be mapped to pqr@destination.com. This will apply to all line items in the same project. Group mapping for Google Drive as the destination is case-sensitive. 
  • Migrations of over 15GB are now supported. These settings prevent timeout errors when a Speedster import takes more than 10 minutes to complete.
    • Set LargeFileMigrations=1
    • Set LargeFileMigrationsTimeout=7200000
      • 720000 value is an example; time is measured in milliseconds
  • ShouldConvertToDestinationFormat=1 MigrationWiz converts the Microsoft file types (".doc", ".docx", ".ppt", ".pptx", ".xls", ".xlsx") into Google file types (Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides), where possible. The file conversions do not happen by default.
  • ShouldConvertToO365Format=1 Converts the Google file format to Microsoft format.
    Before using this advanced option, consider the following:
    • If the Source is in Google Drive format, the file will retain its current Google file format when migrated to the new Google Drive Destination.
    • If the Source (on Google Drive) is in Microsoft format, the format will remain as that Microsoft format when migrated to the new Google Drive Destination.
    • Files over the size limit supported by Google Drive will not be kept in Google format but will be converted to Microsoft format at the destination

Notification Tab

Important

Consider that notifications should only be set up before the final pass. If performing a single, Full pass, set this up now. If you are following a Pre-stage migration strategy, only set this up before the final Full (Delta) pass.

Set the Advanced Option to send a notification to end users after the migration pass completes:

  • Send successful migration and notification to:
    •  Source email address if users are still using G Suite Gmail
    • Destination email address if users have already migrated from the G Suite Gmail platform.
  • Checkmark the Customize "successful migration" email box to customize the notification email by adding your own customization text and company name to this email.

Run Verify Credentials

You may verify the credentials of items in MigrationWiz without migrating data or consuming any licenses.

  1. Open the Project containing items you wish to validate.
  2. Select the items you wish to validate.
  3. Click the Start button in your dashboard.
  4. Select Verify Credentials from the drop-down list.

Once complete, the results of the verification will be shown in the Status section.​ 

Notify Users

Notify users that a migration is occurring. Send an email to all users telling them the time and date of the migration. During this time, they should not modify any documents in their Google Drive accounts, because any modifications will not be included in the migration.

Run Migration

  1. Click on the name of the Project you want to run.
  2. Select one or more items to migrate by checking the box next to the item name. If you want to select all the items, click the checkbox to the left of Source Email.
  3. Click on the Start button and select the type of migration to run.
  4. If you want to delay your migration, then select the checkbox marked "Automatically start the migration at", and enter the date and time to have the migration start. To start a migration immediately, you do not need to select the scheduling option.
  5. Click Start Migration.

Request Statistics

Click the pie chart icon in the MigrationWiz dashboard to receive an email containing all the project migration statistics. 

Migrate Shortcuts

Shortcuts are a new type of file introduced in Google Drive. A shortcut is a link referencing another file or folder. When you open a shortcut, you are accessing (opening) the file referenced by the shortcut. Downloading a shortcut will download the file the shortcut points to. Shortcut titles are visible to everyone with access to the folder or drive the shortcut is in; however, they may only open it if they have permission to the original file.

Migrating shortcuts is not required. If you do not wish to migrate shortcuts in your Google Drive to Google Drive migration, simply skip this section. This migration type is only available for Google Drive to Google Drive migrations and will not function in any other scenario. 

Shortcuts cannot be migrated if the target document and its permissions are not already available at the destination. All relevant documents and permissions must be migrated before attempting to migrate shortcuts. If the destination target folder is not shared with the owner of the shortcut, the shortcut (within the shared folder) will not be migrated.

After all relevant documents and permissions have been migrated, you will run another migration pass. This will migrate only Shortcut files. After the successful completion of this migration run, shortcut files will be available at the destination for the relevant documents.

Post-Migration Steps

  1. To prevent users from inadvertently logging in and using their Google Drive accounts on the acquired company's G Suite platform, decommission the Google Drive user accounts, or change their passwords.
  2. Notify users once the migration has been completed.
  3. If you set the MigrationWiz Advanced Option for Notifications, they will receive an email upon migration completion.
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