Shared drives

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Steps to create and manage Google Shared Drives

We have a set of Video Tutorials about Shared Drives and how to move your content into them. These will cover everything you need to know. It should take about 30 minutes to watch all of them.

Info: Find your Shared Drive Usage

Info: My Drive vs. Shared drives vs. Shared with me

How-to: Create a Shared Drive and manage Members

How-to: Moving content into a Shared drive

Paying for Additional Storage

We offer a passthrough pay option, meaning you pay for additional storage directly to our reseller, and we arrange for the additional storage to be applied to a Shared Drive (or a few).

  • Additional storage is only offered at $1,440 annually for 10 TB of storage. There are no other smaller quantities available to purchase. You can purchase multiple blocks of 10 TB.
  • Additional paid storage can only be applied to Shared Drives. We can also split each 10 TB block up to 10 Shared Drives, in whole TBs only.
  • Once you've received confirmation that your Shared Drive capacity has been increased to the paid limit, you can move all your content into the Shared Drive.
  • Once you have informed us you want the Passthrough Pay Option, you will need to complete an MOU. Be sure to identify who will sign for your department. Please follow this link to preview and access the MOU.

Expanded Shared Drives

Expanded Shared Drives are available for free, with a 150 GB, 500 GB, or 1 TB maximum capacity. Expanded Shared Drives are available first-come-first-served until we can evaluate the ratio of demand vs. allocation availability. We can only offer one 1 TB Expanded Shared Drive per unit/group, or per 40 employees, whichever makes the most sense for your request150 GB and 500 GB Expanded Shared Drive availability is more flexible.

  • Expanded Shared Drives are available primarily for department or unit use. 
  • The content must be collaborative documents and content that needs to persist: it should continue to be available regardless or who joins or leaves the university.
  • Research data sets, non-collaborative data, and backups/archives of any kind are not eligible for Expanded Shared Drive storage.
  • 1 TB Expanded Shared Drives will be approved for collaborative content that needs to persist, and equal consumption across all the departments and units  on campus will be considered before approval.
  • 150 GB and 500 GB Expanded Shared Drives are not limited by equal consumption - they will be approved for collaborative content that needs to persist and are limited to one per unit/group.
  • If you'd like to request an Expanded Shared Drive, please complete this form. 

Student Organizations

Since students do not have the ability to create a Shared Drive, you will need to ask an active employee or student advisor to create one for you. Once they create the Shared Drive for you and add you as a Manager, you can remove them. The shared drive creator is not responsible for the content in a student organization's Shared Drive. If you need help finding someone to create your Shared Drive, contact OASIS.

If you have Editor access on individual files and you are a Contributor or higher on a Shared Drive, you can drag the file(s) into the Shared Drive so that your group can gain ownership. All members of the Shared Drive will gain access and be able to see everything inside the Shared Drive. The current owner will change to Editor and all others will retain the access they previously had. 

If you want to be able to move folders, you need to have Edit access on the folder and you need to be a full Manager on the Shared Drive. You also need to be granted a special temporary permission to move folders. Request this temporary permission for your move project by completing this form

What is a Shared Drive?

Shared Drives are special folders in Google Drive that you can use to store and collaborate on files within a department/unit/team. Unlike in My Drive, Shared Drive files are owned by the department instead of individuals. If members leave, the files stay in the Shared Drive so your group can keep sharing content and information without interruption. Additionally, Shared Drives exist outside the Life Cycle limits of individual Google accounts and have more granular permissions and roles.

The default Shared Drive storage limit is 25 GB.

Get Help

Learning about the Google Cost Reduction Project
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Search the Knowledge Base
Request support
bConnected@berkeley.edu
510.664.9000

Shared Drives Login

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Once you are a member of a Shared Drive you can access from the Drive interface. 

At a Glance

Key benefits:

  • Files are owned by the department/unit/team instead of individuals so that if a member leaves the Shared drive or the organization, the files remain in the Shared drive. 

  • All members of a Shared drive have access to all content in the drive

  • If you are using a Google Group to manage the membership or partial membership of a Shared drive, you can easily control access to the Shared drive by adding or removing the individual from the Google Group. 

  • You can use Google for Desktop to access your Shared drives. 

  • A Shared drive has five levels of permissions or roles for the members:
    • Viewer, Commenter, Contributor (Add and edit files), Content manager (Add, edit, move, delete and share content), and Manager (Manage content, people, and settings). For a more detailed look at permissions and roles, visit Google Shared drive permissions and roles

Known limitations:

  • Before you move content into your Shared Drive you will need to understand the security risks and potential permission changes on files. You will also need to be aware of potential content move failures or restrictions. See Google’s help document, Move your organization's content to shared drives for more information. 
  • Cannot use the file upload feature in a Google form owned by the Shared drive because folks completing the form are not members of the Shared drive.