How to migrate ownership of all files in shared folder to one account before shutting down the other

Question

I currently have 2 Google Drive accounts (personal and school). Because I'm finishing my degree, my school account will shut down. I have one shared folder between both accounts and half the files are "owned" by the school account. How can I get everything to stay in my personal account?

I have a few questions about how this works, as I'm new to this scenario:

1. If my school account is discontinued, will all the files owned by that account disappear from my personal drive?
2. Can I transfer ownership of all the files to one account alone?

Anyway, I'm curious to know what the best approach would be in this scenario.

Answer 1

The answer to both of your questions is "yes".

I don't know that there's a way to change ownership of files in bulk. You probably need to do each individually:

From the account you want to transfer from: Go into the sharing information for each file. Make sure the other account is listed, and change its access level to "is owner".

Be careful, as a file can only have one "owner". If you happen to mark the wrong person you'll lose control of the file. (This probably isn't an issue for you.)

Answer 2

If you're using the Google Drive app or Backup and Sync from Google, simply copy the files from the Google Drive folder on your hard drive to somewhere else on your hard drive. Then you'll have copies that won't be affected by what the other account does.