A complete guide of shared drive (Team drive)

Team drive is the best cloud services to store large files:

1. Unlimited Storage (For ALL members in the drive, even for normal google accounts!!!) (The only limit is 400000 files)

2. Almost impossible to be deleted

What's a team drive:

A team drive is a collaboration cloud storage that offers unlimited storage space for the members in it.

How long does it last:

Normally forever. Because normally the only chance for a team drive to get deleted is when the school/organisation decides to unsubscribe from g-suit plan. Since g-suit education and non-profit is free, it is basically impossible for you to lost your data in team drives. (If your team drive is hosted on edu/non-profit accounts such as ccsf, swccd etc...)

Explanation:

1. Unlimited storage:

"Unlike files in My Drive, files in a shared drive belong to the team instead of an individual. Even if team members leave, the files stay in the team drive so you—and the rest of the team—can continue to access information and get work done."

(Ref: https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/9310156?hl=en)

That means if you upload some stuff to the team drives, even if you leave the team drive, the files still stay! Because the files belongs to that team drive instead of your account.

2. Almost impossible to be deleted

 It is almost impossible for an admin to delete team drive.

See this thread:

https://support.google.com/a/forum/AAAA034zvV8qop37NV5mgQ/?hl=en&gpf=%23!topic%2Fapps%2Fqop37NV5mgQ

The admins can restrict a particular team drive https://support.google.com/a/answer/7662202?hl=en&ref_topic=7337266

But all of these are tedious to do, especially in bulk. So school admins won't bother to do that.

So it will be 100% safe if you are using team drive for personal storage.

It is also the best place for sharing piracy files publicly(Not folder, since you can't share a folder in a team drive directly.) Since even if a file is reported and deleted because of copyright issues, it won't affect any of your accounts.

If your team drive files received a lot of copyright infringement. It might get the school admins' attention and get deleted. But chances are very rare and I have never heard that.

The only way that team drives may be deleted is when the school or the company cancel their g-suite subscription. Then the team drives that belongs to their domain will be deleted. But that is almost impossible to happen. (Especially for schools, since g-suite for education is free of charge.)

They only limitations of a team drive

-Maximum 400000 files in a team drive (That means size doesn't matter. Only the number of files matter!)

-Maximum members in a team drive: 600

(But you can add members in a google group to bypass the limit.)

-You can't share folders in a team drive publicly (But you can share multiple files.)

How to copy large contents to (and from) team drives:

Background: Google allows copying content, but it has a limit of 750gb per account per day. So here are the two tools to bypass this limit:

Autorclone is a tool that can bypass google 750gb copying limit.

It allows team drive to team drive, public folders to team drive, and also possible for team drive to edu accounts too.

Autorclone info: https://github.com/xyou365/AutoRclone

Btw, folderclone is also a very good tool to bypass 750gb copying limit. But it only supports public folders to team drive.

Folderclone: https://github.com/Spazzlo/folderclone

If you have any questions feel free to ask someone in RFS main group: https://t.me/raymondfreesoftware

BTW:

-⭐I have a movie, TV show, documentary,anime sharing team drive. It contains over 350TB stuff. I am actively adding more content to it. The final goal is to have 1PB content. You can join just by clicking a button. Have a look at this document for more information: https://telegra.ph/How-to-join-our-movie-team-drive-with-just-a-click-11-21

The invite link is in that document where you can join the group via a simple click.