How do I back up my cloud storage?

This article explains how graduating students, departing employees, and other users can back up their personal files from University-provided OneDrive and Google Drive for Business accounts before their access ends, or just to have a back-up. It describes relevant account and data retention time-frames, and provides clear instructions for saving your important files. If your University account is nearing deactivation, or if you see error messages when trying to access your cloud storage, consult this guide promptly.

Solution 

Backing Up Files 

Anyone leaving the University (graduates, departing employees, or others losing account eligibility) should back up their files before their University account is deactivated. File recovery is not always possible after account deactivation, especially if the designated retention window has ended. It is also a good idea to have your own back-up of important files in your OneDrive.

WARNING: Ensure to the files you are moving to your personal [non-UMS] OneDrive or Google Drive belong to you and are appropriate to store in your personal cloud storage location or any other location you are backing it up to. If there are files that will be needed by others after you leave, that they should be moved to Google Shared Drive or SharePoint.

OneDrive for Business

    Sign in to your University OneDrive account via web browser.

  1.     Select files and folders you wish to keep
  2.     Click Download; files are saved to your local device, often as a .zip file
  3.     If needed, extract files from the .zip
  4.     Save or move files to your personal [non-University] storage solution: personal OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, or an external drive
WARNING: If backing up to your computer, ensure it is not saved to a location already synced to your OneDrive (i.e. Desktop, Documents, One-Drive - University of Maine System folders).

Google Drive for Business

  1.     Sign in to your University Google Drive through your browser
  2.     Select your personal files and folders
  3.     Right-click and select Download; Google may bundle files into a .zip
  4.     For a bulk download, use Google Takeout (if enabled by your institution)
  5.     Transfer files to your personal account or device
INFO: For additional options, see Google Transfer

Detailed Information

Time-line and Data Retention

 

WARNING: Even though graduates can keep their University gmail account for awhile after graduating, you should start migrating off of it, so you have time to update email subscription, back up important emails, back up your contact list and let others know what your new email will be. 

Environment

  • Google Drive
  • OneDrive
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