Putting an entire Google Workspace organisation's Google Drive accounts into read-only mode

[Martyn_Drake]

Hi,

My employers need to copy the contents of everybody's Google Drive to another cloud-based platform.  We don't want users to make any changes while we make the copy.  The only thing I can find relating to this is file locking via Google Drive API - but is there any other method in which to disable user's write/delete access to Google Drive for a short period, but still allow the tool (which will presumably be using Google Drive's APIs) to copy the data?

Many thanks,

Martyn

[sinigur]

There are probably more options available to you if you can forego on trying to preserve read-only access for your users during the migration. If you are open to suspending their access during the migration, then in the Admin you could disable the Drive service for your users, either for all or some individually or in Groups. Disabling the service will prevent their write/delete access, as well as their read access of course, but should still allow the migration tool to do its job. You should definitely test this out first with a single user or test account. Here is a reference for you: https://support.google.com/a/answer/6115117?hl=en

Depending on your org, the total size of Drive files to be copied, and probably some other parameters, this approach may or may not be feasible for your users. Or, it may be feasible for some users but not all. If it will be a relatively short migration time window for a user (i.e. 24 hours or less), perhaps you could suggest they download offline copy(s) of the most key, urgent files they decide they might need access to and that becomes their "read-only" access method.

[Martyn_Drake]

Thanks, Sinigur. 

I think the problem stems from none of us having access to the migration tool itself, but having managed to find the instructions, it seems that it should be okay as is, particularly if the migration itself is likely to be carried out over a weekend when nobody should be working.