Using Google Drive and Shared Drives

Google My Drive and Google Shared Drives are web-based storage solutions integrated with Google Workspace for Education.

My Drive

My Drive provides personal storage for your Michigan Tech account and allows you to access your storage, and share documents you have stored, using a web browser from any computer or mobile device.  Files located in your My Drive belong to you. If you need to share files and folders, we recommend using a Shared Drive instead of sharing out your My Drive folders and files.

To learn more about My Drive, including uploading and accessing files, viewing and updating, organizing and searching, and sharing and collaborating, begin by reviewing the Google Drive training and help.

You can learn all about your My Drive, including, but not limited to:

• How to upload and store files in Drive
• Install and set up Google Drive for desktop. University computers have Google Drive for Desktop already installed.
• Manage your files
• How to download your Google data
• Copy content from your school account to another account

Shared Drives

Google Shared Drives are shared spaces where teams can easily store, search, and access their files anywhere, from any device. Files in Shared Drives belong to the team instead of an individual. You can use a Shared Drive to store files and folders that can be used even after a student or employee leaves the university, as the folders and files are not in their individual My Drives. Shared Drives will need to have an active member of Michigan Tech as a Manager.

To learn more about Shared Drives, including how to set up a Shared Drive, add files and folders, organize files, and share and collaborate, begin by reviewing the Google Drive training and help.

You can learn all about Shared Drives, including, but not limited to:

• How to create a shared drive
• How to add members and set access levels
• How to create folders
• How to add and edit files
• What the Shared drive limits in Google Drive are
• How file access works in Shared Drives
• How to change member access levels
• How to remove members

There are a few instances where technical issues would prevent you from using a Shared Drive:

• If you are using a Google Form to populate a Google Sheet, that Google Sheet will not work on a Shared Drive.
• If you have a folder or sub-folder that needs to be restricted from some members of the Shared Drive, this is not possible. You can only add additional access to folders, not take it away.

Student access

Access to Google Drive and Google Photos expires 120 days after you’re no longer a student. Contents of these folders are marked for deletion at that time.  Please visit our customer support article on how to copy content from your school account to another account.