Moving Personal, Private, and Shared Drives with Movebot

There are many different ways to organize files, especially when using cloud storage. Not only can you organize files in virtually unlimited ways, but many cloud storage providers have their own unique way of structuring and sharing files and folders too.

This is fine when you’re using the system, but what about when it’s time to move to a new platform because of constraints, budget, or features that your organization needs? What if the new platform uses a different organizational architecture? Do you have to sort through every one of your directories and sort them manually? Are you out of luck and can’t move your data? 

Not if you use Movebot. With support for over 30 storage providers and compatibility with any folder and organization structure, Movebot can help you move data and make sure you can access it as expected on your new destination. 

Personal and Private Files

Although they sound like synonyms, personal and private folders are very different. Personal files belong to an individual while private files have restricted access. Think of personal ones as someone's house, and private ones as a locked closet in a bedroom in the house. 

Every working system that can do cloud migrations can do it for personal folders. All you need is an account at both places, make the connection, and get transferring. Personal files are simple to move and can simply be carried over or remapped to a new directory on the destination. Where things get complicated is when permissions or private files come into play. 

Private Content in a Migration

Private content is where it gets tricky. Can you migrate private folders and still keep them private? 

Using Movebot, you can migrate any folders you have access to, and even narrow down what kind of content to migrate based on how it was shared. 

For example, in Google it’s possible for a user to share a file with somebody and give them full access. Then the person it’s shared with can remove the original user’s permissions which can cause the file to get lost or “orphaned” since it has no legitimate owner. 

Fortunately, Movebot can still find those files if needed, along with other options for specific cloud platforms. That way you can be confident that you aren’t losing any data–or that you can leave some files behind that no one has access to that aren’t important.  
Shared files

Shared drives. Team folders. Shared sites. Shared with me. All terms platforms use to say that more than one person has access. No matter what the term, Movebot can move these types of files too. 

Shared Drives and Shared Folders

Shared Drives are drives owned by an organization. These are meant to be used as a collaborative workspace where everyone can add files and share them with other people in the organization. Both folders and individual files can be added to shared drives. They’re an excellent way to work together, with options for each team to have their own shared drive for easier collaboration. 

Shared Folders tend to fall under an individual account. Like shared files, a personal folder becomes a shared folder when the owner chooses to share it with somebody else. That folder is now a Shared folder, even though it was originally part of a personal account. 

Restricted folders within Team Folders

Many cloud platforms designate between folders that are owned by an organization and private files. And sometimes there’s a mix between the two. 

Say you start a new job and get a new company email. When you use cloud storage like Dropbox you’ll probably see a lot of folders you have access to right away as part of a shared drive. But within that drive you see a folder with a Limited Access tag. When you try to open it, a warning tells you that you don’t have access. There are no passwords or workarounds except to ask for someone who has access to grant you access if you need it. 
Even though you have access to the organization’s files, the organization can limit specific folders, making them a hybrid of private and shared; for instance, the Marketing Team could have access to all folders except the Marketing Financials folder that only the manager has access to. 

But what if the company decides to move storage providers? Will employees get a chance to sneak a peek because the migration product doesn’t support the organizational structure of private folders?

Making your migration perfect

Movebot has a lot of options to make sure you have what you need when the migration is finished. The option for pulling files “shared with me” is one of these options. But what happens to your “Super Secret Stuff” folder in the destination platform? Can anyone access these files on the new system? 

Not if you’re using Movebot. There are a couple of different ways to make sure the right people have access to data after a migration such as migrating users and migrating permissions. 

Migrating users

Fortunately, restricted files stay safe with Movebot if you choose the right options. Migrating users is one way to do this. When you have a lot of users, you might not want to recreate all of them in the new system. With Movebot, you can migrate users and manually remap them for the destination through a csv file. 

This can be useful to make sure that a user gets migrated with the same hierarchy as they used to have. So if they couldn’t see the Super Secret Stuff on the old platform they won’t be able to on the new one either– as long as you configure permissions on the new system too. 

Migrating permissions

Part of the PAC process involves deciding if you want to pull over existing sharing and file permissions. Depending on how you’ve handled permissions in the past, this can be useful or it could be a good opportunity to restructure permissions. 
Movebot lets you add mapping rules to match source users or groups to the destination user or groups. You can do this as part of the main migration or separately as a delta migration afterwards. We recommend pulling the data first, then the permissions to make sure everything is at the destination before adding rules to the data. 

Is there anything Movebot can’t transfer? 

No data movement tool can do everything, nor should they try. Movebot focuses on moving files, folders, users, permissions, and metadata into the cloud or from one cloud platform to another. However, Movebot doesn’t support migrating emails and calendars. Fortunately, there are a lot of options for migrating emails. Some platforms have that functionality built right in, and for more complicated email migrations, you can use a service like BitTitan’s Mailbox Migration Tool. 
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But for practically everything else? Movebot’s got the speed. And not only that, the compatibility too. 

Whether you have a complex hybrid organization system or simply need a transfer from one personal Dropbox to another Movebot can do it. Plus, it’s easy to use. You can try Movebot free for 14 days without a credit card to find out if it's right for you. And with file moving rates using simple per TB pricing, it's a fast and affordable option to get your data where it needs to be. 

Give Movebot a try and register for a free trial today.