1. BitTitan Help Center
  2. Perform a Migration
  3. Google Workspace Migrations
  4. Google 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. 

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.

Some item types are not migrated. Click the bar below to expand the full list of what item types are and are not migrated. We are constantly working to create a better migration experience for you, so these items may change.

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.

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. 

Migrated Items

Google Drive

Migrated

  • Folders
  • Folders you have shared
  • Permissions
  • G Suite native files (except Google Forms)
  • 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. These settings will 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

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 use 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

Prepare the Source Environment

Source Endpoint: Google Drive or Google Drive (Own Service Account) Endpoint

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

Prerequisites

Subscription to Google Cloud Platform.

  • Google Super Administrator account.

  • Ability to set up a service account on the G Suite tenant.

  • Service account must be set up before the MigrationWiz project is created.

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 current project name, click Down icon and select the newly created project name from the list.

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 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 ‘Service accounts' page, click vertical ellipsis under 'Actions’ column for the service account created above.

  8. Click 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

  1. 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 Customer Tenant Account.
      5. Find and copy the service accounts Unique ID number. This is the Client ID number that will be used in a later step.
        • This field often needs to be added to the view. Click on the Column display options button and add a checkmark to Unique ID, then click OK.
        • This Client ID should be considered similar to Administrator account passwords and handled securely.
      6. 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.
      3. Click API Controls.
      4. Under Domain wide Delegation, click Manage domain-wide delegation.

       Once these 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:
      3. For 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
      4. Click Authorize.

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

Prepare the Destination Environment

Follow the same steps as listed above, but use the following OAuth scopes as listed below:

For 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

Set up MigrationWiz 

Create New 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 into 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. You have to enter an email address, login name, and password for each user if you didn't enter administrative credentials when setting up the project. You only have to provide an email address if you entered administrative credentials when setting up the project.
Bulk Add

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.

There are few requirements in order for this to work:

  • The Source has to be Exchange 2007 or later, or 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.
  • 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 not a 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 on 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.

Set Advanced Options

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

Under Support/Support Options add:

  • InitializationTimeout=8 - This increases the initialization timeout window to eight hours. 

  • DocumentBrowsingMode=FullCopy - This option migrates all accessible content for a user, along with associated permissions.

  • 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. 

Formatting

  • If the Source is in Google Drive format, the format will be converted to the corresponding Microsoft 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.
  • To preserve the Google Drive format, add the Support option ShouldConvertToDestinationFormat=1 to your project.  

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

  • Notifications > Send successful migration and notification to: > Source email address (if users are still using G suite Gmail) or Destination email address (if users have already migrated from the G Suite gmail platform).
  • Customize the notification email. Checkmark the Customize "successful migration" email box. Add your own customization text and company name to this email.
  • 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 prior to the final Full (Delta) pass.

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 permissions 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 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 completed.
  3. If you set the MigrationWiz Advanced Option for Notifications, they will receive an email upon migration completion.
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