{"id":21010,"date":"2024-01-19T16:08:49","date_gmt":"2024-01-19T21:08:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/alumni\/?page_id=21010"},"modified":"2024-04-23T14:31:34","modified_gmt":"2024-04-23T18:31:34","slug":"google-storage-migration-faq","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/alumni\/google-storage-migration-faq\/","title":{"rendered":"Alumni Google Storage Migration FAQ"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a decade of free Google services, the parent company Alphabet has announced fees for all higher education institutions\u2019 data storage for Google customers. BU\u2019s storage is significantly over the maximum allowed in our contract, and we must mitigate this or face substantial financial penalties. With these changes, Boston University can no longer provide alumni with storage on BU Google Drive after June 1, 2024.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Your BU Gmail account access will remain unaffected, and you will maintain your BU Google Email, Calendar, and Contacts.<\/strong><\/p>\n

By June 1, 2024, you will need to remove all<\/u> files from your BU-provided Google Drive, Google Shared Drive and Google Photos.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Frequently Asked Questions<\/h3>\n

How do I determine how much information I have stored in my BU Google Drive?<\/strong><\/h4>

\nClick on the link below and login with your BU credentials. You should see the BU logo next to your name. https:\/\/drive.google.com\/drive\/quota<\/a>
\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

How do I transfer ownership of Google Drive files to a personal account?<\/strong><\/h4>

\nYou may have try opening an incognito window before navigating to the takeout site.
\nOpen the Google Transfer page<\/a> in a Chrome browser where your private Gmail account is already signed.<\/p>\n
    \n
  1. “Signed in” here means to any google website (gmail, drive, etc). To check which is the signed-in account, go to gmail.com and look at the icon in the top-right. BU’s Gmail is branded with our logo (what we want to see), private Gmail is not (this will cause errors).<\/li>\n
  2. How to open a private window in Chrome: https:\/\/support.google.com\/chrome\/answer\/95464?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop<\/a> <\/li>\n
  3. If the data in your BU Google account is too large, you may also get an error you\u2019re your private Gmail does not have enough space and the transfer will not work. If that happens, you can simply download the data by going to https:\/\/takeout.google.com<\/a> and initiate a “Takeout” which will create .zip files you can download with all of her data.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    <\/div>\n<\/div>\n

    Will I still have access to my BU Google email account?<\/strong><\/h4>

    \nYes! All alumni email accounts will remain active. We can accommodate the storage in the mailboxes, though we may be asking those with extra-large mailboxes to archive some mail, but that will come later. It is their Drive, Shared Drive, and Photos that alumni will no longer have access to. They will need to move these files out of BU Google.
    \n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

    Are there alternative options to store my data taken from Google Drive?<\/strong><\/h4>

    \nYour Google data can be stored in several different ways.<\/p>\n

    Local data download<\/strong>: You can download your data locally to your Mac or PC. Please click here<\/a> for instructions to download your files directly to your computer.<\/p>\n

    You can also choose another online storage platform and either pay for a subscription or use their free options (depending on the amount of data you have). You will still need to download the data and then upload the information to this new provider.<\/p>\n