Drive transfer

[Adam Strugatch]

A little confused about transferring a departing user's drive.

Should I be using:

gam create datatransfer old...@acme.com gdrive new...@acme.com

Or should I be using:

gam <UserTypeEntity> transfer drive <UserItem> 

Thanks

[Iain Macleod]

Hello Adam,

I believe the "gam create datatransfer" creates a data transfer the same way as if you went through the Admin Console UI. Meaning Google handles transferring all the files from one user to another. 

If you use the " gam user transfer drive" it will use GAM to transfer all the files (This takes a lot longer than create datatransfer) but you have more advanced options to target specific files to transfer. 

Note you may want to gather up the orphaned files before you start the transfer. Bellow find an example that will gather all the orphaned files and place them in a folder. 

"gam user [email] collect orphans targetuserfoldername "Orphans - #user#" useshortcuts true"

[Adam Strugatch]

Hi Iain

Thank you for the response. I ended up doing create data transfer. I didn't see this reply until after I completed the task. What is the goal of the "collect orphans" task?

Thanks again

[Iain Macleod]

Orphans are files that a user owns but are no longer in a folder or the root of the owners drive. This can happen when a user places a file in a folder owned by someone else, then the other person deletes the folder. The folder is deleted, but the file still exists. The only way to find the file now is to either have a link to it or search for it in the search bar.  

The collect orphans task finds all the orphans the user owned and places them in a folder in their root. This way when you do the "Create Transfer" command the folder with all the orphans is easily accessible by the new owner.