Team Drive used to be the most anticipated G Suite feature before its release in early 2017. Although When you actually start sorting out your data there comes a choice between normal “My Drive” folders and Team Drives. Which one is better? As you might have guessed there is no clear answer to this question: the aim of the text below is to describe all the “pros and cons” of Google Drive compared to Team Drive
First let’s have a look at classic My Drive folders, which was the only way to create folders before Team Drives emerged. My Drive is good for public file sharing with unrestricted access (like free-to-download files on your website, for example). Levels of access can be specifically set and files from My Drive can also be synce to desktop applications.
Seems enough for any collaboration? Not really – if you have a lot of specialists working on the same document the simple “can edit”/”can’t edit” logics is clearly not enough. The same refers to the “ownership” parameter of a file which might cause problems if such “owner” leaves the company.
Team Drives
The implementation of Team Drives solved both of major restrictions in terms of collaborations: permissions and ownership. “Full access” role means being folder admin, while “edit access” lets collaborators work on specific files and even create new ones but not delete things, which is critical.
Another advantage of Team Drives is that a folder’s visibility is way better: when given access, a user can see folder on the sidebar an Shared With Me folder.
Conclusion
My Drive folders are best for individual and small group usage while Team Drive works best with large number of collaborators.
And of course regardless of which Drive folders you use your data should be properly backed up.
UpSafe backup is a perfect fit to ensure the protection of your drives as well as emails, contacts and calendars.
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UpSafe team