Google Drive

Google Drive is a cloud-based storage solution that allows users and organizations to store, access, share, and collaborate on files from any device. Cloud Protection Service enables you to protect user data in your Google Drive environment.

Considerations

Before you initiate backup or recovery, you must review the following considerations:

Protection Group and Policy

Selected items for backup are organized into a single entity known as a Protection Group. This approach simplifies backup management, as policies controlling the backup schedule, retention period, and related parameters can be assigned directly to specific Protection Groups. Recover operations are also streamlined, allowing you to initiate a Recover for all items within any given Protection Group at once. Each item can belong to only one Protection Group at a time, ensuring clear and consistent policy enforcement. You can assign an existing policy or create a new policy as needed.

Supported Backup Types

  • Full backup
  • Incremental backup

Supported Items For Backup and Recover

  • All types of data, metadata, permissions, and file properties in User Drive
  • All types of data, metadata, permissions, and file properties in Shared Drive
  • Security groups

Unsupported Items for Backup And Recover

  • Settings of drives
  • Drive level permissions
  • Computer nodes due to API limitations
  • Shared with me folder

All About Recovery

After successful completion of backup, the backed up items can be recovered in case of data corruption or data loss.

  • A drive where you intend to recover content must exist before initiating recovery. A new drive cannot be created during recovery.
  • Bulk recovery of all drives is supported.
  • Granular recovery of files in one drive is supported. Granular recovery of files in multiple drives is not supported.
  • Selection of the desired recovery point is supported.

Recovery to different locations is supported:

  • Original Location: Recovery to the same drive from which the item was backed up is supported. If the parent folder is deleted from the original location, the folder hierarchy is recreated.
  • New Location: Recovery to another drive within the same or another registered Google Workspace source is supported.

Ownership and Permission Recover Behavior

  • Owner and organizer permissions are not Recoverd because ownership transfer is not supported by the API.
  • Only non owner permissions, reader, writer, and commenter, are Recoverd, and only when restoring to the original location.
  • Ownership is assigned automatically by the platform:
    • For User Drives, the target user becomes the owner.
    • For Shared Drives, ownership remains with the shared drive, existing shared drive owners.
  • The system does not check whether the original owner exists, and no manual ownership reassignment is performed.

Recover Behavior for Matching Files

File matching during Recover is based on file name, not ID. Because Google Drive allows multiple files with the same name, the following rules apply:

  • If multiple files with the same name exist in the backup copy, the system never overwrites source files. It always creates new files during Recover.
  • If multiple files with the same name exist in the source, the system never overwrites source files. It always creates new files during Recover.
  • For one to one matches, you can choose one of these options:
    • Overwrite the source file. Version history is preserved.
    • Skip the Recover.
  • Files in the destination that do not match are not removed.

Folder Conflicts and Recover Behavior

When restoring from one drive, for example, Drive A, to another, for example, Drive B, folder name conflicts may occur:

  • If Drive A has multiple folders with the same name, for example, Project Docs, their contents are merged into a single folder in Drive B.
  • If Drive B already has multiple folders with the same name, the most recently modified folder is selected as the destination.

Google Drive Native Data Types

You can back up and Recover the following Google Drive native data. These native types are not backed up in their native format. Recover re imports the content back to the original native types.

Item Type MIME Type (Prefix With application) Supported Backup Format
Google Docs vnd.google-apps.document Yes Docx, Google Doc
Google Sheets vnd.google-apps.spreadsheet Yes Xlsx, Google Sheet
Google Presentation vnd.google-apps.presentation Yes Pptx, Google Presentation
Google Drawing vnd.google-apps.drawing Yes Png
Google Apps Script vnd.google-apps.script Yes Json, Google Apps Script
Google Vids vnd.google-apps.vid, vnd.google-apps.video No
Drive Shortcut vnd.google-apps.shortcut Yes N A
Email Layout vnd.google-apps.mail-layout No
Google Calendar No
Google Chat No
Google Maps vnd.google-apps.map No
Google Meet No
Fusion Table vnd.google-apps.fusiontable
Google Sites vnd.google-apps.site No
Google Forms vnd.google-apps.form No
Google Photos vnd.google-apps.photo No
Third Party App Shortcuts vnd.google-apps.drive-sdk No