Ailsa

By Ailsa twitter/ Last Updated January 16, 2024

Why Do You Need Cloud Backup?

  • Are you afraid of accidentally losing the data stored on your hard drive?
  • Are you anxious that there is not enough space locally for backup?
  • Are you panicked that you have lost all local backups due to local accidents?
  • Backup all your data to the cloud offsite, never lose data and recover them from any PC.

Eliminate all your concerns with the Best Cloud Backup service - CBackup

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Quick Guide

Wanna Move Files from One Google Drive to Another?

 

How do I copy Google Drive to another account?

I have files in a school Google Drive account that I want to transfer to my personal Google Drive. I share a folder with my personal account, but it does not allow me to copy the entire folder to another location. How to copy Google Drive folder to another account without any obstacle? Thanks in advance.

- Question from support.google.com

This case is from the Google forum and there are many users who have similar questions and wonder how does Google Drive move files between accounts? However, the “Move to” option is only available when you simply use it to move a file in Google Drive to another folder, or move multiple files in a folder, instead of another account.

Why Copy Google Drive Folder to Another Account?

Google Drive has been released for many years and almost users have at least two accounts, so some users may want to move files to another Google Drive account. Why? Here are two main reasons in the following.

Move a file in Google Drive

Gain more free space of the same cloud. The cloud storage of free accounts is limited but you may need more space. By default, if you are using a free Google Drive account, you only have 15GB. And the cloud storage will be filled up sooner or later. So, you may create more than one Google Drive account and want to move Google Drive folder to another account for more space. 

Data transfer for some purposes. The second is that you want to discard or give away one of your Google Drive accounts and transfer important files. For instance, you want to transfer files from the account used at school to a personal account.

Also, there are other reasons, such as copying Google Drive folder for backup, the current Google Drive account is not working properly, transferring data from one Google account to another for personal use or professional use, and moving the essential files in a shared folder to another account, etc. Let's learn how to transfer all Google Drive files from one account to another from the following content.

Best Free Tool for Data Transfer from One Google Account to Another

By default, Google Drive does not allow you to copy Google Drive folder to another account, but you can share your folder with another account and move all files via "Make a copy", use "Google Takeout" or the traditional downloading and uploading.

Besides these commonly used ways, this article also offers you a simple and easy-to-use free cloud backup service - CBackup, and it has more advantages. Here, I’ll explain it in detail for you.

CBackup Main Page

  • This software can transfer all files from one Google Drive to another easily, even move files between different clouds. Then you could move Google Drive folder to another drive, backup Dropbox to Google Drive, etc. 

  • This software also offers you multiple flexible backup/sync settings, such as file filter, email notification, schedule backup/sync (daily/weekly/monthly), version cleanup, etc. And these settings can save disk space, get you out of waiting processes, keep your data up-to-date, etc.

  • This software still can be used to combine cloud storage regardless of different cloud accounts. That’s to say, if you have 2 Google Drive accounts, you will get 30GB could storage. The premise is to create a CBackup account and connect all your Google Drive accounts.

  • You could perform PC cloud backup to backup computer data to the cloud, like Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, CBackup Cloud, etc.

How to Copy Folder Between Google Drive Accounts - Easy & Secure

This is the first and easiest way to copy Google Drive folder to another account, and you will use the Google Drive migrator - CBackup in the following. Moving files from one Google Drive to another is easy to operate with the cloud to cloud sync of CBackup.

Step 1. Add Google Drive Accounts to CBackup

For how to copy an entire Google Drive to another account, please make the following preparations first:

1. Please sign up for a new CBackup account for free, then download CBackup desktop and sign in.

Download CBackup Win 11/10/8.1/8/7/XP
Secure Download

2. Navigate to the Storage tab, select Google Drive, and click Authorize Now to continue.

Add Google Drive

3. Then modify the Cloud name and Storage path for Google Drive, tick the checkbox before Note and click OK to connect Google Drive to CBackup. 

Complete Google Drive Info

Tips: Repeat the above process to connect other Google Drive accounts to CBackup. 

Step 2. Transfer Files from One Google Drive to Another

Then, transfer data from one Google account to another with the following steps.

1. Click Sync and Sync Public Cloud to Public Cloud subsequently.

Sync Public Cloud to Public Cloud

2. Hit New Task in the pop-up window, and then modify the task name to distinguish it from other tasks. Then, click Add Source button to select Google Drive and hit Add Destination to add another Google Drive.

Add Source And Destination

Tips: You could also choose some of the Google Drive folders and files to be transferred to another Google Drive account while configuring source files.

3. Set sync settings and click Start Sync to copy Google Drive folder to another account.

Transfer Google Drive to Another Account

Note: As you can see from the above picture, there are some backup settings in Settings (on the bottom left) for this task to set up. If you don’t know which one to choose, please see below, here is an explanation.
Email notification: This feature is designed to send you an email to tell you the final result whether success or failure and free you from waiting processes.
File Filter: This feature is used to exclude the file type you don’t want to sync or only contain the file type need to be synced. By default, it will sync all files. To some extent, this feature helps you save sync time and disk space.
Daily/weekly/monthly sync: To continuously protect your data and always keep the latest version, you need to enable Scheduler to sync files or folders in Google Drive at a specific time, or regularly, like Daily, Weekly, or Monthly. You can set it to any time without affecting work efficiency, such as, after 6 pm or before 9 am.

Sync Scheduler

Besides, you could try the cloud to cloud backup to backup one Google Drive to another account without powerful settings, and restore data anytime.

Bonus tip: move computer files to Google Drive with CBackup

In addition to easily moving files in Google Drive to another drive, you can also use CBackup (go to Sync > Sync PC to Public Cloud, then follow the steps) to move files from computer to Google Drive. CBackup also provides professional PC cloud backup services. You can use multiple cloud storage services such as Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, etc., as well as CBackup Cloud (10GB FREE) with large-capacity backup space as a backup or sync destination. Why not download and use it now?

Start Sync Files to Google Drive

Besides, CBackup has the ability to expand your Google Drive storage space for free, if your Google Drive storage full, you could use CBackup to combine multiple Google Drive accounts to generate a huge backup space.

4 Common Ways to Transfer All Files from One Google Drive to Another

In the following, you will learn the commonly used ways of how to transfer folders from one Google Drive to another, including using the "Share" feature, "Google Takeout" and traditional downloading and uploading. For detailed steps, please see below.

Method 1. Copy Google Drive Folder to Another Account via “Share”

This method only allows you to copy one Google Drive folder each time. At the same time, if you want to delete original files in the secondary Google Drive account, you need to copy files to another folder via the “Make a copy” and “Move to” features. If you want an easy way, please go back to the top way.

Step 1. Go to your Google Drive, locate the folders you want to move, and right-click and select the “Share” feature.

Share

Step 2. In the pop-up window, type the secondary account and set the authorization, then click “Send”. If you want to set the permission to “Is Owner”, please click “Advanced” and change the permission under the “Who has access” tab.

Send Share Link

Step 3. Log in to the secondary account, and go to the “Shared with me” tab. Then, select all files inside the folder, right-click and select “Make a copy”. After copying, you will see a copy of the original file on the right side.

Make A Copy

Step 4. Right-click all the copies, select “Move to” and another location to store all files.

Method 2. Transfer Entire Google Drive to Another Account by “Takeout”

With the "Google Takeout" tool, you cannot export data using Google Office format and you need to convert the uploaded files to Google Office format manually. For an effortless method, you can use CBackup.

Step 1. Go to Google Takeout, click “Deselect all” and then tick the checkbox on the right side of “Drive”, then click “Next Step”.

Deselect All

Step 2. Choose the delivery method, frequency, and file type, and click “Create export”. Wait until the process is 100% completed.

Create Export

Step 3. Go to your Gmail account and open the downlink sent by “Google Download You”, then click “Download”.

Download

Step 4. Unzip the zip file and upload it to another Google Drive account via “Folder Upload”.

Method 3. Transfer Google Drive Folder to Another Account with “Downloading and Uploading”

This method is time-consuming. If you want to save backup time, you can consider the easiest way.

Step 1. Launch your Google Drive, locate the folder you want to transfer, and put in a new folder.

Step 2. Go to “My Drive”, right-click the new folder, and select “Download” from the context menu. And all files will be compressed into a zip file.

Download

Step 3. Unzip the zip file and extract all files.

Step 4. Log in to the secondary account, click “+” and “Folder upload” to upload the folder you want to copy.

Upload

Method 4. Transfer Google Drive Folder to Another via Drag and Drop

You could download the Drive for desktop on your computer, and sign in to the two Google Drive accounts. Because Google Drive allows you to sign in to up to 4 Google Drive accounts on one computer.

1. Log in to your two Google Drive accounts that you want to copy folders with, and open the two Google Drive folders.

2. Copy Google Drive folder from the first Google Drive account, and paste it to another Google Drive account.

Wrapping Things up

Speaking of copying Google Drive folder to another account, you may feel a little tricky, because all of the commonly used ways have disadvantages. For example, The “Share” feature only shares a folder every time and Google Drive does not copy an entire folder.

This is why I recommend the free but professional cloud backup server - CBackup. All steps are very easy, and you can use it to transfer all Google Drive files to another account effortlessly, even backup files to Google Drive. And you can benefit from its backup settings, such as saving disk space, keeping data up-to-date, etc. Sign up with CBackup and copy your Google Drive folder.

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