Can rclone copy files I don't own from one Google account to another google account?

Help and Support
1

I am having a challenge with Google Drive and thought rclone is the solution, but turns out it's not. However, I still think rclone can be of help, of a new problem that came up when trying to solve the initial problem

Question first:
Can rclone copy folders & files directly server to server from my personal Google Account to my Google Workspace account, when I am not the owner of the file?

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I plan to migrate folders from my personal Google Drive to my business Google Drive. It's a difficult task if you don't want to loose the original Google file format (do not convert to XLS, etc.), not want to lose versioning & comments.

I managed it without rclone. The solution is to use the "Shared Drive" of Google Workspace as a middleman, i.e. moving folders with files from personal Google Drive to the Shared Drive of Google Workspace will also transfer the ownership (but it only works for files where I am the owner).

Problem:
I can't move files from my personal Google Drive to my business Shared Drive as I am not the owner of all the files. Some files were uploaded from clients during collaboration (added to a shared folder in my personal Google Drive). To be able to move all folders from my personal Google Drive to the Shared Drive in Google Workspace, I need to take care of the individual files first that are not owned by me.

I am ready to lose versioning/comments for those files as it's mostly images, PDFs, and not Google file formats.

I think the only way to do this, is to make a copy of those files - I will lose meta information but I'll gain ownership. And here is where I think rclone can come into place. I only need to think how to identify all those files in my Google Drive.

Related discussion: Transfer from Google Drive A to Google Drive B and include versioning of Google Docs - #34 by mar

2

As long as you have permissions to read the file then rclone should be able to copy it.

What you could do it copy the files that you can preserving metadata then use rclone to fill in the gaps. Rclone won't overwrite files which are already in place and correct.

3

Not sure if it is possible. Because Google doesn't allow to move over the folder from the personal drive to the Shared Drive in Google Workspace when a specific amount/percentage of files are owned by someone else.

Note, copying would not work. It must be the movement of Google folders & files.

First of all - today I finally solved it. I am on this topic for a year (on and off) and I just could not accept it anymore. It was a full day of manual work. I manually identified and downloaded all folders that contain files that I don't own. Then I deleted those folders. After that, I was finally able to move everything over to the Shared Drive in Google Workspace (Google file format, versioning, comments stay). Now I am on the higher plan (Standard and not Starter anymore to get the Shared Drive)

Next I could manually upload the folders that contain the files from clients to the Shared Drive. Those are copies and the copies are not done directly via rclone, but just download/upload (this means of course file format, versioning, comments get lost, however it was mostly images, pdfs, videos, .. I just didn't care anymore).

But I think that part would work with rclone as well. And when rclone is not overwriting it, I could have done it one step better with rclone.

Thanks for your help .. and I hope if someone comes across it, it'll be of help as well.