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Quick steps to recover a deleted team drive
- Login to the Google Admin Console > go to Menu > Apps > Google Workspace > Drive and Docs > Manage shared drives.
- Filter, find, and select the deleted drive and click Restore.
With so many amazing features, Google Workspace has truly taken employee engagement by storm. It has helped professionals and their organizations to reach new heights of productivity, innovation, flexibility, and collaboration. In addition, G Suite has been able to brilliantly turn all the words written about them into a successful reality. While continuing this trend, the concept of Shared team drive has made the lives easier for all the team members. As the name suggests, a shared drive belongs to the entire team. Though great for teamwork, a team drive can easily be deleted by any team member, which immediately raises a few eyebrows. But don’t worry because in this article we will be discussing the method of recovering a deleted team drive in G Suite.
Shared Team Drives in G Suite
Shared drives basically act like a shared storage space where all the team members can store their files and folders and can access them anytime from any device. Instead of transfer of emails from one user to another in G Suite, emails can be sent from a single email. It belongs to the entire team and not to a single user. This simply indicates that an exit from a user will not result in the deletion of the entire drive. All the data will continue to stay in the same place for other members to carry on with their work. It guarantees work without any kind of interruption and prevents loss of data. Since the number of team members is higher, the chances of mistakenly deleting the drive also increase. That is the reason the admins need to be careful about the shared drives. They should be quick to respond if they do get deleted.
Recover a Deleted G Suite Team Drive
Google Workspace has been designed with advanced data recovery abilities that are capable of restoring all kinds of data, under the condition that the user will adhere to a fixed timeframe specified.
- Who can restore the team drive?
Only the administrator has the right to restore the entire Shared drive and all its content. - Till when can the data be restored?
The admins can recover the deleted drive and all its content from the Trash folder within a window of 25 days only. Nothing can be done after those 25 days have passed and no amount of effort would be able to bring back the data.
Steps to recover the drive within G-Suite
- Sign in to the Admin Console using the Admin account.
- From its dashboard, choose the ‘Apps’ icon.
- Now, move to ‘Drive and Doc’ which is available under the ‘Google Workspace’ option.
- Click on ‘Manage shared drives.’
- You can also choose to ‘add a filter’ to narrow down your search.
- Finally, click the Restore Data button to start recovery.
What to do after the 25-day recovery period expires?
Google clearly says that once the 25 days have passed since you or your team member deleted the data, you cannot recover a deleted team drive in G Suite. There is no way to restore this data from any Google Server. Even if you are using Vault, recovery is not possible in this case. Therefore, smart team leaders invest efforts in finding a secure G Suite backup tool to back up the shared team drive.
Kernel Google Workspace Backup and Restore is that reliable tool that supports all plans of G Suite and offers to easily back up entire shared drive data directly to your local hard disk or a network-attached storage. Moreover, the tool has multiple filters like data range and folder selection for a controlled and selective drive data backup.
Why choose this tool to back up G Suite data?
- Offers to backup complete G Suite data, including mailbox and Google Drive
- Allows you to download all files and folders from the standard drive and the shared drive.
- Supports all of Google Workspace plans, including Business, Enterprise, Essentials, etc.
- Perform a backup and save data anywhere in the user’s preferred destination.
- The software runs smoothly on all versions of the Windows operating system, including the latest one, Windows 11.
How to Prevent Accidental Shared Drive Deletion in Team Drive?
You can only recover a deleted team drive within the 25-day period and backups will cost you money. So, the best thing to do is to make sure no one deletes the important files/folders. Practice these techniques to minimize accidental deletion cases within your team:
- Limit the rights for data deletion. Configure the team drive’s account settings to only allow the admin to delete the drive.
- Periodically review team members and remove any inactive or departed employees to end his/her drive access rights.
- Make sure the notifications for your Google Workspace are on. This helps to get timely alerts and reduce the chances of missing the 25-day data recovery window.
- Take backups of your complete team drive to help with fast data restoration even in case the Google Admin Console fails to restore data.
Conclusion
Shared drives have made it possible for all G Suite team members to access common data more easily. But what if this Shared team drive gets deleted by a user? These situations are very likely to happen, which is why the admins must be attentive. G Suite only allows you to recover a deleted team drive within 25 days of deletion. Only a small percentage of users are able to regain their data in this manner, as they often miss the deadline. There is no other method to recover the data unless you have taken a backup of your G Suite account. The Kernel Google Workspace Backup and Restore is an excellent tool that serves the purpose.
Frequently Asked Questions
A. Yes. When the entire drive is deleted, all files are removed. So, the access rights of the file that was shared will also be removed and the outsider will no longer be able to access the file.
A. No, you can only restore the drive from Google Console. There is no option to restore a complete drive in the Google Drive app interface. Also, not everyone can run the restoration, only a Super Admin can recover a deleted team drive in G Suite.
A. The Admin Console only allows complete drive recovery. You cannot restore a single file from there. However, if you have a backup of the drive, you can find and restore that particular file.
