Moving files between two cloud accounts or providers is more than downloading a pile of files and uploading them again. When the source contains nested folders, the practical approach is to treat the job as a copy of a complete folder tree. This gives you a better chance of keeping folder names and levels, while recognizing that cloud collaboration state may not transfer unchanged.
The realistic goal is not to promise that every property will survive. It is to preserve the ordinary folder tree, then review the features that depend on the provider. Links, permissions, ownership, comments, versions, shortcuts, metadata, and provider-specific online documents may need separate handling.
Important ownership and workplace warning
Before moving anything from a work or school account to a personal account, copy only personal files that you are authorized to retain. Employer or school confidential information and intellectual property must not be copied unless the applicable policy or law expressly permits it. Changing the account or storage location does not change ownership or remove confidentiality obligations.
Plan a copy before planning a move
Use copy for the first pass instead of moving or deleting the source. Create a clearly named top-level folder in the destination and copy the complete tree into it. Keep the source until the result has been reviewed. This leaves you a way back if files are missing or if native documents need to be exported and checked.
- Freeze edits for a short period, or ask users not to change files during the copy.
- Separate personal material from work, school, or shared material, and confirm authorization.
- Create a top-level destination folder.
- Check account restrictions, destination quota, and whether files are fully available locally or online-only.
- Copy the top-level folders as complete trees instead of selecting unrelated files one by one.
- Compare counts and sizes for ordinary files, then open representative samples.
- Review links, permissions, ownership, comments, versions, shortcuts, and provider-specific objects.
- Retain the source for the period required by your backup or organizational policy.
- Delete the source only after validation is complete and the required retention period has ended.
Desktop folders: the practical choice for many users
For Google Drive and OneDrive, and for other providers that support both accounts in their desktop clients, you can expose the source and destination folders in File Explorer or Finder and copy the top-level folders. Google Drive for desktop exposes Drive folders through ordinary file-management tools. Microsoft recommends this general approach for copying between OneDrive locations.
Before starting, check account restrictions, available destination quota, and whether files are fully available on the computer or remain online-only. Online-only files may need to be downloaded during the copy, affecting time and local disk space. For OneDrive, Microsoft recommends copy and paste rather than drag-and-drop because it is less prone to dropping items in the wrong location. For other providers, copy and paste is still a practical precaution against placing items in the wrong destination.
When rclone may fit a larger migration
For large migrations or jobs involving more than one provider, rclone can operate on configured cloud remotes and copy directory trees between supported storage systems. This may reduce the need for a local staging disk, but it does not automatically mean that the data bypasses your computer or travels server to server.
Server-side copying depends on the capabilities of each backend. Check the capabilities of the backends you will use, and plan for bandwidth, API limits, and metadata limitations. Do not assume that rclone will preserve collaboration settings or provider-specific objects. The final comparison must be based on what the destination actually supports.
Native documents and objects that are not ordinary files
Native Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides are Workspace documents rather than ordinary binary files such as a saved Word or Excel file. When the destination does not support those native formats, export them to a compatible format such as DOCX, XLSX, or PPTX, and then open and validate the converted files. Export is a format conversion, not a guarantee that the original collaboration state will be reproduced.
After conversion, review important functionality, comments, and collaboration history separately. The converted file may be usable while still not carrying the same collaborative context. Also handle shortcuts, shared-drive items, and other provider-specific objects separately; do not assume that they will appear as ordinary files whose counts and byte sizes can be compared in exactly the same way.
What may not survive the transfer
- Links: Important links may need to be recreated or updated.
- Permissions and ownership: Sharing settings may not transfer, and ownership may follow the destination provider’s rules.
- Comments and versions: Do not assume that review history or earlier versions will remain available.
- Shortcuts and metadata: These may depend on the original provider or on properties unsupported by the destination.
- Work or school to personal copies: OneDrive warns that files copied from work or school accounts to personal OneDrive are treated as new and may lose metadata such as Date created and Modified By. Shared files must also be shared again.
Why avoid browser downloads for a very large tree?
A browser download can be suitable for a small set of files, but it is often a poor fit for a large tree. Dropbox documents that a folder download is a compressed ZIP copy, and limits folder downloads to folders under 250 GB and with fewer than 10,000 total files. The result is not synchronized content, so you may have to unzip it, upload it, and validate the new copy afterward.
Validate before deleting the source
Start with ordinary files and folders: compare their counts and sizes, then open samples from different file types and different levels of the tree. Test important links from the intended accounts, review who has access, and confirm that exported documents work as needed. Examine native Workspace documents, shortcuts, shared-drive items, and other provider-specific objects separately instead of assuming their counts or byte sizes will match the source.
Dropbox’s documented shared-folder method uses a shared folder between two accounts, after which the destination account moves the items into its own folders. Once the items are moved out of that shared folder, the first account loses access. The shared folder is therefore not an independent backup. Keep the source or another backup according to your policy, and remove the source only after validation is complete and the period required by your backup or organizational policy has passed.
Practical conclusion
A practical general method for preserving the ordinary folder tree is to copy complete top-level folders through desktop clients, or to use rclone for larger jobs after checking its backend capabilities. Work in stages: confirm authorization and ownership, copy, validate ordinary files, then review collaboration and provider-specific data separately. This approach helps preserve structure without confusing a surviving folder tree with a fully preserved cloud workspace.