Why use Shared Drives?

Storing files in a Shared Drive, instead of in your UMD My Drive, offers a variety of benefits, especially when working in a team environment. Here's why you might consider requesting a Shared drive for your projects:

• Enhanced Collaboration: By granting access permission to your team members, everyone can collaborate on documents seamlessly. This eliminates the need to individually share each document with every person, making collaboration more efficient.
• Document Persistence: Documents stored in a Shared drive remain accessible to the team, even if a member leaves the project or the organization. This ensures continuity and access to all work-related materials, regardless of individual team member changes.
• Easy Onboarding: Adding a new member to your project team or work group is straightforward. Granting them access to the Shared drive instantly provides them with all the shared documents they need, bypassing the need to share each document individually.

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Shared Drives vs. shared files and folders

The decision between using a shared file, folder, or shared drive should be based on the collaboration's scale, duration, and the need for continuity. For individual or temporary sharing needs, shared files or folders may be adequate. However, for extensive team projects and ensuring ongoing access regardless of personnel changes, shared drives provide a more robust and reliable framework.

Personal ownership vs. team ownership and storage quota implications

• Shared files and folders
  • Owned by individuals, shared files and folders reside in the owner's Google Workspace account, thus counting against their 256 GB storage quota.
  • This personal ownership model means if the owner departs from UMD, access to these shared resources is subsequently lost to all collaborators.
  • This loss of access extends to collaborations with external partners—if they leave their organization, you lose access to files and folders they've shared, even those created in your drive.
• Shared Drives
  • Designed for team collaboration, shared drives are not owned by any single individual but by the team itself.
  • This collective ownership ensures that documents and files remain accessible to all team members, regardless of individual departures from UMD or external collaborators leaving their organizations.
  • Unlike individual shared files/folders, the content in shared drives does not count against any single person's 256 GB storage quota.
  • Instead, it's counted towards the larger shared drive quota of at least 1 TB, offering a sustainable solution for managing team projects and facilitating long-term collaboration without impacting individual storage limitations.

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How do I request a Shared Drive?

Use the Request UMD Shared Drive form to request a UMD Google Shared Drive.

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How do I move files in Google Drive from My Drive to a Shared Drive?

1. Access your Google My Drive and locate the files you want to move.
2. Select the file or files by clicking on a single file or holding the Shift key while clicking all the files you want to move.
3. Right-click or Ctrl-click on the selected files.
4. Select Organize.
5. Select Move.
6. Select All locations.
7. In the drop down list of available drives, double-click on Shared Drives.
   
8. By double-clicking, navigate to the drive and folder where you want to move the files.
9. Click the Move button.
   • You will receive a message that the ownership will change to the shared drive.
10. Confirm by selecting Move.
    • The files are moved to the folder you selected.
      

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Moving folders and files

To move a folder and its files to a shared drive you must be a manager of that shared drive. We recommend to test the move with a smaller portion of your content before transferring larger amounts.

• Moving content from an individual drive to a shared drive transfers ownership to the shared drive managed by its designated managers.
• Original owners of the content become content managers, keeping access but not ownership.
  • This means the shared drive now owns all its contents, granting access to all collaborators of the shared drive.
  • As a result, both original and additional collaborators can seamlessly work with the moved content.

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How to add or assign a manager to a Google Shared Drive?

NOTE:  You must be a shared drive manager yourself to give the manager permission to another user. Submit a request to itsupport@umd.edu if administrative privileges are needed.

1. Log in to your UMD Google Workspace account and navigate to the Google Drive application.
2. Click Shared drives on the left to select the drives shared with you.
3. Click the three dots menu on the right side of the shared drive you manage and select Manage Members.
   
4. Choose an existing member and change their role to Manager. If the person is not a member, add them first and give them the Manager role.
5. Click Save to save the changes.
   

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How do I purchase a larger UMD Shared Drive storage tier?

If you're running out of storage space in your UMD Google Shared Drive, you may be able to request a higher quota for storage or purchase additional storage. You will need to submit your request for more storage. If you request more storage you must include a valid Driver Worktag.

Information required to request a quota increase to a shared Drive storage

Use the Google Workspace Team Drive Size Exception Request form to request a shared drive storage quota increase.

A request to upgrade requires the following: 

• Requestor’s name.
• Selection of UMD Google shared drive to receive the upgrade.
• The selection of a pre-defined upgrade tier (2 TB, 3 TB, 5 TB, Purchase multiples of 10 TB).
• UMD Driver Worktag.
• Requestor’s UMD department head.

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What options do I have to increase my storage tier?

Here are the different tiers that you can purchase and their associated costs.  All prices are an annual cost.