I was using G-Suite as my primary ‘home’ for all things ‘cloud’. Pictures, storage, etc etc. Somewhere along the line Google decided to move into Workspaces and tried to encourage people to move. While they offered an educational option, there was no ‘family’ option and workspaces is very business oriented and expensive – if you’re not making money (It’s actually really cheap if you’re truly using it for business purposes)
At any rate, because I was using a grandfathered plan, I should have known better – DO NOT MAKE ANY CHANGES.
But stupid me, I did. I tried adjusting the size of the storage subscription I had and it burned me. Suddenly my account was locked, and I couldn’t send/receive email or backup new pictures.
I tried contacting Google to “undo” and just revert the change but they were unflinching in their approach. Not to mention – have you ever tried to actually TALK with someone at Google?!
At any rate, I decided to decouple my GSuite in favour of the free offerings, and thus, the migration begins.
Google Photos
The big one – the scariest one to manage was Google Photos.
I used method C then B for a few albums of importance. I skipped quite a few I had created for various reasons, just to save time.
I used this method to back up all the photos. With 2gb partitions, it meant I had to download 104 files over 3 days of effort…
https://support.google.com/photos/thread/197868/i-want-to-delete-all-photos-from-google-photos?hl=en
Not gonna lie – it was a bit unnerving deleting all my digital photos for the last 20+ years. But, I had backed everything up, checked my target account after deleting a few and then took a leap of faith like Dr Jones on the quest for the holy grail and began the gruelling task of deleting the photos. I doubt the poster was able to delete 30k photos in 5 minutes. Each select took about 1 minute, then delete took another minute.
That said, it wasn’t too bad, maybe 30 minutes worth of actual work.
Because I had two windows open, I had a moment of panic. Close the windows you don’t need when deleting.
Google Drive
Stupid me – I discovered really late – just install the drive sync engine and use Windows Explorer after a full sync to copy the files out. I started by downloading folders which was painfully slow. Don’t do this.
Google Play Books
Because of licensing issues, I can’t migrate my purchased books or upload the library. Oh well, for now I still have access in my legacy G Suite if I ever need them.