How to Backup Google Shared Drive

26 Aug 2022

5 min read

Anju George

Article at a glance

Backing up Google Shared Drives using native tools like Google Vault and Google Drive for desktop has significant limitations:

Google Vault lacks built-in restore features and cannot handle large-scale data exports, making it an unreliable backup solution.

Google Drive for desktop takes up substantial hard drive space, and synced files are vulnerable to modifications or deletions. What is the solution?

Shared drives are special folders in Google Drive that can be used by teams to store, search, and access files. They enable smoother collaboration and communication, increased visibility, easier document management during onboarding, and better administrative control. Learn more about shared drives and how they differ from My Drive.

Given the many benefits of Google shared drive, a large volume of business-critical data is created and shared in it. Since Google is not responsible for backing up your data, it is the responsibility of IT administrators to ensure that organizational shared drive data is backed up regularly so that business data is always available.

This article explores the different ways in which administrators can back up Google shared drive data.

1. Backup Google shared drive data using Google Vault

Google Vault is a retention and eDiscovery solution that can be used to retain, search, and export an organization’s Google Workspace data. To learn more about Google Vault, read this article.

Though Google Vault is intended to be used by businesses to search and retail data needed for litigations and regulatory compliance, it can also be used to retain shared drive data for an unlimited period.

Note: Google Vault licenses are included only in the following Google Workspace editions: Business Plus, Enterprise, Enterprise Essentials, all Education editions, and G Suite Business. If your organization's Google Workspace edition doesn’t include Vault, you may be able to buy Vault add-on licenses. Learn more

1.1. How to backup Google shared drive data using Google Vault

To retain shared drive files using Vault, follow the below steps:

Step 1: Sign in to vault.google.com using your admin credentials.
Step 2: Click Retention -> Custom Rules -> Create.

backup google shared drive using vault - retention

backup google shared drive with vault - custom rules

Step 3: Under Service, select Drive and then click CONTINUE.

backup google shared drive using vault - select Drive

Step 4:Under Scope, choose All shared drives if you wish to back up all the shared drives in your domain, and click CONTINUE. If you want to back up only specific shared drives, select Specific shared drives, select the shared drives that need to be backed up, and click ADD. Click CONTINUE.

Step 5: Under Duration and action, select Indefinitely. This will retain all the selected shared drives for an unlimited period, even if they are permanently deleted from the Trash folder.

1.2 Limitations of Google shared drive backup using Google Vault

While Google Vault can be used to retain shared drive data indefinitely, it has serious limitations as a backup alternative. Even Google acknowledges that Vault is not a backup solution. Below are the reasons why one should not use Vault as a backup alternative:

Without a built-in restore feature, organizations will have a hard time restoring data in the event of data loss.
Vault exports are not designed for large-scale or high-volume data.
Google Vault cannot create differential backups or deduplicate data.
Data will not be accessible in the event of Google outages.

2. Backup Google shared drive data using Google Drive for desktop

Google Drive for desktop application is similar to its former products like Backup and Sync and Google Drive File Stream. While the Backup and Sync desktop application can be used to sync My Drive files to your PC, it does not support syncing files in shared drive. With Google Drive for desktop, you can easily sync Google shared drive data to your PC.

2.1. How to backup Google shared drive data using Google Drive for desktop

To sync shared drive data to your PC using Google Drive for desktop, follow the below steps:

Step 1: Download Google Drive for desktop and install the application on your PC.
Step 2: Click the Google Drive icon in the taskbar and add your Google Workspace account to Google Drive for desktop. You can also click on Add another account to add another Google Workspace account.

backup google shared drive: add your account

Step 3: Click the gear icon in the upper right corner of the pop-up window and choose Preferences in the dropdown menu.

backup google shared drive: open preferences

Step 4: Navigate to Google Drive, choose Stream files or Mirror files as the sync mode to sync Google shared drives to your PC.

Step 5:All the files in shared drives will not be automatically available offline no matter which sync option you choose. You can manually make them available offline. To do this, right-click on the required shared drive and select Available offline in the dropdown menu.

Note: You can make a shared drive available offline only if you are a Contributor, Content manager, or Manager of the shared drive.

2.2. Limitations of Google shared drive backup using Google Drive for desktop

It takes up a lot of your hard drive space, therefore, you need to be selective with the shared drive files you back up.
Backed up files can still be modified or deleted, since your Google shared drives and desktop are synced.
If the system crashes or if there is a malware attack, the backup is lost forever.

3. Backup Google shared drive data using third-party tools

Since the native features offered by Google are not designed for the purpose of backup and restore, they have serious limitations as a backup solution. Third-party cloud backup applications, like SysCloud, that are tailor-made for backup and restore are reliable options when it comes to backing up your shared drive data.

SysCloud backup for Google Workspace allows administrators to effortlessly back up all shared drives associated with a Google Workspace account and restore or export them whenever needed. With SysCloud, admins can restore deleted shared drive files with sharing permissions and folder structure intact.

3.1. How to backup Google shared drive data using SysCloud

To back up Google shared drive data using SysCloud, follow the below steps:

Step 1: Login to SysCloud using your admin credentials. Go to Jobs and click on Create a new backup job.

backup google shared drive using SysCloud

Step 2: Enter a name and description (optional) for the backup job and click Next.

backup google shared drive using SysCloud - name and description

Step 3: Add the Google Workspace account that contains the shared drives that need to be backed up. Click Next.

You will have to connect your Google Workspace account to SysCloud if it’s not already connected. Learn how to do this.

Step 4: Under Scope, select the Google Workspace account and the domain for which you need to back up shared drives.
Step 5: Under Apps, select Shared Drive. By default, all shared drives are included in the backup job. To choose specific shared drives, click on the link All Shared Drives selected for backup. In the pop-up box that opens, choose the required shared drives and click Confirm.

Step 6: You can choose to turn on auto-backup if you want to back up all current shared drives as well as any newly created shared drives in the selected domain.

Step 7: Choose how long the shared drives need to be retained. By default, the selected shared drives are retained for an unlimited period. To give a specific retention period, uncheck the Unlimited option and enter the desired retention period. You can also exclude certain files from the backup based on the file type and file size.

Step 8: Once all the selections are made, click Confirm and then click Start backup.

This will back up the selected shared drives. To view the backed-up data, go to Archives -> Shared Drive.

To learn how to recover deleted shared drive data, read our in-depth article How to Recover Deleted Files from Google Shared Drive

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