Shared Drives Best Practices

Google Shared drives are shared file storage in Google Drive where teams can create, store, collaborate on, and access all their team-owned files. The following are some best practices to consider when creating Shared drives. To learn about using Shared drives versus My Drive, see Google Shared drives and My Drive Differences.

Plan Before You Create

Consider the best way to organize your shared drives before you create them. Shared drive permissions are granted either at the shared drive level (i.e., members can access the entire shared drive) or at the file and/or subfolder level (i.e., members can only see a specific file or folder within their Google Drive). You may want to create different shared drives for different groups of people to keep the permissions simple and easy to manage.

A shared drive can have a maximum of 600 individual members and 100 Google Groups with a maximum of 50,000 total individuals. To see other limits, visit Google’s Shared Drive limits help document.

Note: Students cannot create shared drives so they will need to contact the Help Desk at help@lafayette.edu or (610) 330-5501. Please include the following information in the request:

  • The reason for the shared drive request
  • The name of the faculty advisor (if the request is associated with a research or club project).

Establish Naming Conventions

Your department, division, or team may want to come up with a standard naming convention for all shared drives. Some examples are:

  • ITS Projects
  • English External Review
  • HR 2025 Budget

Move Files from My Drive to a shared drive

Files that should be in a shared drive like files belong to a group or department instead of an individual, should be moved instead of making a copy. Moving the file maintains the original link and people with existing Edit/View/Comment permissions will maintain them even after the file is moved. Copying files will change the links of these files and could cause confusion among those with whom the files are shared since the files would reside in multiple locations.

Please contact the Help Desk at help@lafayette.edu or (610) 330-5501 if you need to move to a shared drive the contents of a My Drive folder that contains some files you do not own. ITS may apply a special permission allowing you to move such a folder.

Moving Files or Folders

  1. Open Google Drive in your browser and navigate to the file(s) or folder you wish to move.
  2. Click and drag the file(s) or folder to the appropriate shared drive on the left-hand side of the window.
  3. Once moved, the file(s) or folder will appear within the shared drives.

Note: A shared drive can contain a maximum of 500,000 items, which includes files, folders, and shortcuts.

Assign Permissions as Needed

The Manager role has the highest level of access to the shared drive and should be limited to just a few people. See Shared drives membership roles for more information.

Hide Infrequently Used Shared Drives

To help manage the accumulation of shared drives in one’s view, it’s possible to hide shared drives not accessed with much frequency. Hiding a shared drive does not remove one’s membership from that shared drive, nor does it affect any other member’s access to or view of it.

How to hide a shared drive:

  1. Go to drive.google.com.
  2. Click “Shared drives” on the left-side.
  3. Right-click the Shared drive you wish to hide and select “Hide shared drive.”

How to unhide a Shared drive:

  1. Go to drive.google.com.
  2. Click “Shared drives” on the left-side.
  3. Click the “Hidden shared drives” link in the upper-right corner.
  4. Right-click the Shared drive you wish to unhide and select “Unhide shared drive.”
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