Box to Google Drive Migration Challenges and How to Overcome Them

Today, most businesses migrate Box to Google Drive to save costs and improve work efficiency and productivity. While there are significant benefits when transferring from Box to Google Drive for complete consolidation, performing a seamless migration can pose a challenge for organizations.

If you are looking to switch your cloud storage from Box to Google Drive, here are insights on major migration challenges and how to overcome them.

1. Migrating File Metadata

Migrating files from Box to Google Drive is easy but migrating features associated with files like versions, permissions, embedded links, and timestamps is challenging for any business and can’t be migrated through the manual migration process.

Also, Google Drive and Box have different file structures. Google Drive focuses more on user ownership and personal drives, whereas Box uses a centralized folder structure with inherited permissions.

Our enterprise-grade migration tool helps you replicate folder hierarchies, files along with file metadata from Box to Google Drive with accuracy.

2. Nested Folder Limitation

A folder in Google Drive supports up to 20 levels of nested folders. If your box account has any of the folders with more than 20 levels of nested folders, it won’t get migrated to Google Drive, which results in data loss.

To solve the limitation set by Google to the users, CloudFuze experts have developed a feature that migrates your nested folders beyond the 20th level. So, migrating using the CloudFuze tool creates a link with “Long File Name” in the 20th folder, opening the 21st nested folder.

3. Matching the File Permissions

Box and Google Drive are two different cloud storage platforms, and they differ in their user interface, file storage space, and many other features. Similarly, file permissions are completely different in Google Drive from that of Box and matching it while migrating files is a challenging task for IT admins.

While migrating the data, we match the file permissions of Box with Google Drive, as shown in the table below.

4. Risk of Downtime

Downtime is a significant risk when transferring data from one cloud to another. It can be caused due to network connection failures, transferring huge data files, etc. Any downtime caused during the migration results in business disruption and extra expenditure.

It’s a good step to go for managed migration service if your company is aiming to move terabytes or petabytes of data to move with no downtime. Also, Google Drive allows users to upload only 750 GB of data per day. We handle this by carrying out your migration the next day automatically once the data limit, i.e., 750 GB, is reached.

5. Security

If you decide to move your company’s data to the cloud, there are several security risks that you might face. Some tools/applications that you choose to transfer your data quickly and easily might steal your valid admin credentials and your employees, which puts your business-sensitive data at risk.

As a reliable cloud partner, we never ask to share any of your credentials to migrate your files from Box to Google Drive. Your migration is done through secured delegated access using OAuth 2.0 protocol and uses RESTful API platform for enhanced migration speed and performance. For more details, check the security measures taken by the CloudFuze platform when you copy from Box to Google Drive.

6. Migrating Box Notes and Comments

Task management, comments, and real-time editing are just a few of the robust collaborative features in Box Notes. Yet, Box Notes does not have a direct counterpart to Google Drive. Also, comments on Box files, including those added to documents or in Box Notes, are not always retained after transferring to Google Drive.

When moving files from Box to Google Drive, our Box to Google Drive migration tool helps you transfer Box Notes (.boxnote) to Word document in Google Drive. You can transfer all file types in Box to Google My Drive and Shared Drives. With our advanced migration tool, you can securely move inline file comments in your box file cloud to Google Drive.

7. Handling Shared Links

After migrating from Box to Google Drive, it is important to ensure that your users have access to all their own and shared link files and can collaborate in the same way as they do in Box. In the Google Drive environment, shared links from Box may not open properly. This additionally makes accessing internal references by external collaborators a difficult task.

Choosing an industry-leading migration tool helps you preserve shared links with appropriate permissions. Our teams at CloudFuze can help you migrate all the shared link files and folders from your Box account with the same permission levels to Google Drive.

8. API Throttling

API throttling is a significant challenge when performing Box to Google Drive migration. High-volume Box files can lead to performance issues and transferring them without a strategic approach can raise API throttling risks. Box and Google Drive enforce rate limits to ensure service reliability; reviewing them can lead to errors such as 403 User Rate Limit Exceeded or 429 Too Many Requests.

To combine several requests into a single API call for Google Drive, utilize the batch request capability of the Google Drive API. If you have high-volume Box data, segregate total users into several batches and transfer them during migration to lower API throttling risks.

Here’s a Video of our Tool Performing Box to Google Drive Migration:

CloudFuze’s Real-World Case Study: Migrate Box to Google Workspace

Intuit faced a significant challenge in migrating over 1200+ users and 70+ TB of data to Google My Drive and Google Shared Drives. CloudFuze helped Intuit transition from three storage areas, Box, Dropbox, and NFS, to Google Workspace. Earlier, they faced challenges like Dropbox and Google Workspace limitations, server overloads, duplications, etc.

Our team helped Intuit migrate selective versions, perform incremental changes, and resolve limitations. Learn more about this case study here.

Best Practices for Box to Google Drive Migration

Here are few best practices to ensure a successful Box to Google Drive migration:

• Have an in-depth analysis and perform an pre-migration analysis before moving from Box.
• Flatten deep folder structures to adhere to Google Drive’s folder nesting restrictions.
• Use a trustworthy migration tool that can perform permission mapping, restore version history, and necessary metadata along with Box files.
• Run a pilot migration with a limited number of users.
• Verify post-migration data to ensure that files are accessible and intact.

Tackle Box to Google Drive Migration Challenges with CloudFuze

By tackling challenges using our Box to Google Drive migration tool, businesses can transfer files and metadata with accuracy. With 12+ years of experience in cloud migration, we have empowered customers with end-to-end migration services and helped them achieve 100% success.

Connect with us for a free consultation for your migration, or request a quote today!

Frequently Added Questions

1. Can I transfer files from Box to Google Drive?

In case of small volume of data, you can transfer Box files manually by downloading and uploading files to Google Drive. With an advanced migration platform, like CloudFuze, that offers managed migration services, you can customize according to your requirements and perform Box to Google Drive migration with complete replication.

2. Does Box work with Google Drive?

Yes, Box can work with Google Drive. Specifically, you can use Box to store and manage Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides files and integrate Box with Google Workspace. This integration allows you to create and collaborate on Google files within Box and move files between the two platforms.

3. Is Google Drive as secure as Box?

Google Drive and Box implement robust security features, including encryption and access controls. Both platforms protect data at rest and in transit using encryption, two-factor authentication, and strict access controls. However, many organizations with specific compliance needs prefer Box because it delivers more advanced enterprise-grade security and data governance options.