What Is a Google Shared Drive? Shared Drives vs My Drive Explained

A Google shared drive is a team space in Google Drive where files belong to your organization instead of to the person who made them. Members usually share access to the drive’s content, though limited-access folders can restrict who opens particular material. Files stay put when someone leaves. Patronum can move a departing employee’s My Drive files into a shared drive automatically as part of an offboarding policy, so ownership stays with the company.

A quick example

Say your marketing team keeps campaign assets in one person’s My Drive folder, shared with four colleagues. It works fine until that person leaves. Now someone has to transfer ownership before the account is deleted, and the four colleagues keep access only if that happens in time.

Put the same folder in a “Marketing” shared drive and the question never comes up. When you move a file you created into a shared drive, “the shared drive becomes the owner of the file” (Google Workspace Learning Center).

Why ownership matters

Google puts it plainly: shared drive files “are owned by your organization, rather than an individual,” and they “persist even if the person who created the file leaves your organization” (Google Workspace Admin Help).

My Drive works the other way. When a user is deleted, the Drive files they own are kept for 20 days but are “only accessible if you restore the user” (Google Workspace Admin Help). After that, anything nobody transferred is gone.

Shared drive vs shared folder

A shared folder is a folder in someone’s My Drive that they’ve shared with others. It still belongs to that person, and each file inside belongs to whoever created or uploaded it. That’s why Google tells admins that if “there are other owners in the hierarchy, you must transfer those files separately” (Google Workspace Admin Help).

A shared drive has no personal owner at all. Even content that an external member adds to a shared drive your organization created “is transferred to and owned by your organization” (Google Workspace Learning Center). Use a shared folder for a quick, informal handoff. Use a shared drive for anything the team needs to keep.

Shared drive vs My Drive at a glance

	Shared drive	My Drive
Who owns the files	The organization	The person who created or uploaded each file
Who can open files	Members, at their role level, unless a folder has limited access	People the owner shares with
Who can move files to trash	Managers and Content managers	The file owner
Item limits	500,000 items per shared drive, counting files, folders, shortcuts and trash	Up to 500,000 items directly inside any one folder (the My Drive root is exempt), and up to 500 million items created per account
Folder nesting	Up to 100 levels	Up to 100 levels
Membership	Up to 600 direct members, 100 of them groups, and 50,000 individuals in total	Not applicable
When the creator leaves	Files stay in the drive	Files must be transferred before the account is deleted

Sources: Shared drive limits, Storage and item limits, Shared drive access levels.

The item limits measure different things, so don’t read them as equivalent. The shared drive cap covers the whole drive. The My Drive folder cap counts only items sitting directly in one folder, and the account cap counts what a user has created.

How access works inside a shared drive

Each member gets one of five roles: Manager, Content manager, Contributor, Commenter or Viewer. Managers run membership, Content managers can move and delete files, Contributors can edit and upload but “can’t move or delete files,” and Commenters and Viewers can only comment or view (Google Drive Help).

Managers can also limit access to a folder. Once they do, “only people you give permission to can open it,” although other members can still see that the folder exists, and you can’t shut out the drive’s Managers (Google Drive Help). Our guide to Google shared drive permissions covers how roles and file sharing interact, and Google Drive permissions explained covers My Drive files.

Which Google Workspace editions include shared drives?

Google lists Business Starter, Standard and Plus, Enterprise Standard and Plus, Education, Essentials and Nonprofits as supported (Google Workspace Admin Help).

Business Starter is the one people get wrong. It has had shared drives since mid-September 2024, but in a reduced version: some admin and security controls “will not be included in the fundamental version of shared drives for Business Starter” (Google Workspace Updates). That matters if you need tight control over external access and downloads.

Common misconceptions

“A shared drive holds 400,000 items and 20 folder levels.” Those were the old limits. In July 2024 Google raised them to 500,000 items and 100 levels (Google Workspace Updates). Plenty of guides still quote the old numbers.

“Admins create shared drives in the Admin console.” They don’t. “You create shared drives in Drive, not the Admin console” (Google Workspace Admin Help). Admins decide who can create them and manage existing ones. Our walkthrough on how to create a shared drive in Google Workspace covers both sides.

FAQ

Can people outside my organization join a shared drive?
Yes, if your organization allows it and they have a Google Account. Anything they add to the drive is owned by your organization (Google Workspace Learning Center).

Can a shared drive be deleted with files still in it?
No. Only a Manager can delete a shared drive, and it has to be emptied first (Google Workspace Learning Center).

Putting it to work: moving a team off personal folders

Imagine a 40-person company where each team’s working files live in a team lead’s My Drive. Here’s how the pieces fit together:

1. Create one shared drive per team, with at least two Managers.
2. Assign roles by job: Content manager for people who reorganize, Contributor for people who only edit, Viewer for people who only read.
3. Move the folders in. Only Managers can move folders from My Drive into a shared drive (Google Workspace Learning Center).
4. Limit access on folders a subset of the team shouldn’t open, such as salary planning.

People will still leave with files in their own My Drive. In a Patronum offboarding policy, the Files section can transfer the leaver’s files to a shared drive you choose (all files, unshared only or shared only, with one folder excluded if needed). Patronum recreates the folder structure, keeping file IDs and creating new folder IDs (Patronum Help Center). The policy runs on Patronum’s hourly cycle by default for users who match its scope and conditions, such as being moved into an offboarding organizational unit (Patronum Help Center).

Two things stay with you: Patronum doesn’t create shared drives, so the target must exist first, and after the first run you should open it and confirm the folders arrived and the right people can open them. Patronum’s Google Workspace offboarding page shows the full policy.

Sources

• Google Workspace Learning Center, add files and folders to a shared drive: https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/9310154?hl=en
• Google Workspace Admin Help, set up shared drives for your organization: https://knowledge.workspace.google.com/admin/drive/set-up-shared-drives-for-your-organization
• Google Workspace Admin Help, delete or remove a user: https://knowledge.workspace.google.com/admin/users/delete-or-remove-a-user-from-your-organization
• Google Workspace Admin Help, transfer Drive files to a new owner as an admin: https://knowledge.workspace.google.com/admin/drive/transfer-drive-files-to-a-new-owner-as-an-admin
• Google Workspace Learning Center, create a shared drive (access levels): https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/9310249?hl=en
• Google Workspace Learning Center, shared drive limits: https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/7338880?hl=en
• Google Workspace Admin Help, storage and upload limits: https://knowledge.workspace.google.com/admin/drive/storage-and-upload-limits-for-google-workspace
• Google Drive Help, shared drives: https://support.google.com/drive/answer/7286514?hl=en
• Google Drive Help, limited access to files and folders: https://support.google.com/drive/answer/14254362?hl=en
• Google Workspace Admin Help, allow users to create shared drives: https://knowledge.workspace.google.com/admin/drive/allow-users-to-create-shared-drives
• Google Workspace Updates, Business Starter shared drives (August 2024): https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2024/08/shared-drive-access-business-starter.html
• Google Workspace Updates, release notes 12 July 2024: https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2024/07/release-notes-07-12-2024.html
• Patronum Help Center, creating an offboarding policy: https://help.patronum.io/en/article/creating-an-offboarding-policy-15zeh9t/
• Patronum Help Center, when will my policy run: https://help.patronum.io/en/article/when-will-my-policy-run-13y3b4c/