Reduce Storage and Transfer Files After Graduation

Audience

• Students leaving UC Berkeley who need to reduce storage to 5 GB, and transfer or move files

⚠️Before you leave UC Berkeley, it is your responsibility to prevent the loss of important institutional data. All the files you own, even if they are shared with others or in shared folders, are at risk of being deleted. Only files located in Shared Drives are safe from data loss. You must take the following actions:

1. Find files that belong to UC Berkeley but are owned by you. These exist in My Drive and shared folders. 
2. Transfer department/group files to Shared Drives. This is any work or data that belongs to UC Berkeley, that faculty or staff need continued access to. 
3. Move personal files to alternative locations. 
4. Reduce your storage under 5 GB to maintain consistent access to your @berkeley.edu email through the Alumni Email Service.

1. Find Files

Any file you own, even if it is located within a folder owned by someone else, is controlled by you and linked to your account lifecycle. If your files are removed or your account is disabled, others will lose access to these files even if they reside in the shared folder. 

1. Search your Google Drive for content owned by you, or use the advanced search feature and select Owned by me.
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2. Identify which files you need to transfer ownership on. These are collaborative files that are relevant to your department/group, and/or those that contain institutional data. 
3. View a file’s storage location at a glance in the Location column, or click the file to view its folder path. Tip: Use the folder path to quickly review multiple files. 
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4. Refer to the Google Support article Search and filter your files for more information. 

2. Transfer Department/Group Files

Work with your group, collaborators, faculty, or staff to move your content into a Shared Drive. This will change the ownership of the files to the Shared Drive/UC Berkeley, as well as reduce your personal storage usage.

• Ask a faculty or staff member to create a Shared Drive if one doesn’t already exist.
• Follow the directions to Move Your Files to a Shared Drive. 
• If you cannot add to a Shared Drive, follow the directions to transfer files or folders to another individual who may be able to move the files themselves. 

3. Move Personal Files

Move any personal content you want to keep, but that is not needed by campus to a personal storage location such as a personal Gmail account or external hard drive. Moving your files, especially large files, will help reduce your storage to under 5 GB, which is necessary for maintaining an alumni email account. 

• Find large files by searching by size in Google Drive.
• Download individual files to your computer. 
• Bulk download files with Google Takeout (recommended for exports under 50 GB).
• Bulk transfer files between Google accounts with Google Transfer (recommended for transfers under 50 GB).
• Migrate your Google account with VaultMe (UC Berkeley discount available).

Note: Takeout, Transfer and VaultMe create a copy of your content. You will still need to go back to your @berkeley.edu account and transfer ownership or delete your files in order to reduce your storage.

4. Reduce Your Storage

Once you have transferred department/group files and moved personal files, you can delete any files that you, or UC Berkeley, no longer need. 

Note: Your alumni email account is limited to 5 GB of storage. If you don’t reduce your account storage to under 5 GB by the end of your grace period, your account information and data may be deleted, and your ability to send and receive emails will be restricted.