I am leaving a company and my personal OneDrive has around 90GB of files that I want in my personal Google Drive. Downloading and uploading looks painful because OneDrive wants me to zip everything. Is there a smarter way?
What is the easiest way to move my files from OneDrive to Google Drive?
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Marcus Bell October 16, 2026
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There is no built-in button that moves files straight from OneDrive to Google Drive, so everything goes through your computer one way or another. The least painful way:
1. Install OneDrive and Google Drive for desktop on the same PC and sign in to both.
2. In File Explorer, right-click your main OneDrive folder and choose "Always keep on this device". This forces the real files to download (otherwise they are online-only placeholders and nothing gets copied).
3. Wait for the download to finish.
4. Copy the folders into the Google Drive folder (My Drive). Drive for desktop uploads them in the background.
You need enough free disk space for the entire 90GB while this happens.
Makes sense. Do I lose the folder structure or dates?
Folder structure stays the same. File modified dates are normally kept when you copy in File Explorer, the created date on Drive will be the upload date. OneDrive version history and sharing permissions do not move, so if you rely on those, note them down first.
One more tip: avoid special characters at the end of file names and very long paths, Windows and Drive both complain about them. Do a test with one small folder before the big copy.
Update: took about a day because of my slow upload speed but everything is in Drive. Two files with very long names failed, I renamed them and they went through. Thanks!