Shared drive vs My Drive: how the VALORAE group splits its files by venture and by job

On 15 October 2026 I reread four Google help pages on shared drives, because the VALORAE group runs its working files on them and I wanted the rules written down in one place.

One line on Google's Shared drive limits page explains most of how they are laid out.

It recommends against piling many folders into one shared drive, and says to organise content into multiple shared drives instead.

The obvious setup for a group is one big drive called VALORAE, with a folder per venture inside it. Google's own page argues against that design, and the group's drives follow the page instead.

This post is the ledger entry for how the group's files are split, what Google says each choice does, and the naming rule anyone running more than one business can copy.

Step 1: know who owns the file

This is the whole difference between the two kinds of storage.

A file in My Drive belongs to the person who created it. Share it with ten people and it is still theirs.

Google's help page Store and share files or folders with shared drives says the opposite for a shared drive: members share ownership of its files and folders, and if someone leaves the drive, the files they added stay.

That one sentence decides where work goes.

Anything a venture needs next month goes in a shared drive. Anything that is one person's scratch work can live in their My Drive, and nobody else should depend on it.

The same page also says shared drives are only available on work or school accounts. A personal Google account cannot make one.

Step 2: name the drive venture first, job second

Every VALORAE shared drive follows one pattern: the venture name, a vertical bar, then the job.

VALORAE Cast | Administration. VALORAE Cast | Editing. VALORAE Arc | Editors. VALORAE Arc | Recruitment. VALORAE Media | Administration.

The order matters more than it looks.

In any alphabetical list, putting the venture first keeps each venture's drives together. Arc's sit with Arc's, Cast's with Cast's, and nobody reads past one venture to find another.

Putting the job second answers the next question a new member has, which is "what is this for?"

And the bar is a plain character that reads cleanly at a glance. You can see where the venture ends and the job begins without thinking about it.

The founder's own work sits in a drive named TGSIDD, outside the venture pattern on purpose, because it is not a venture's file.

Step 3: split by who needs the files

The split is by audience, not by file type.

That sounds like a small distinction. It is the whole design.

An editor working on Arc clips needs the footage, the brand folder and the style notes. They do not need Arc's administration files, and they have no reason to see anything from Media or Cast.

So editing work and administration sit in separate drives, and each drive can carry its own member list. The drive boundary does the work that a pile of folder permissions would otherwise have to do.

Google's page backs this from the other direction. The limits page says a folder in a shared drive can nest up to 100 levels deep, then recommends against using that depth because members struggle to organise and find content. Several focused drives beat one deep one.

This is the same rule the group applies everywhere else. The what the group shares and what it does not page says the back office is shared and the client list is not. The drives are where that line becomes physical.

Step 4: pick the lowest role that does the job

Google gives a shared drive five member roles. Its help page lists them as Manager, Content manager, Contributor, Commenter and Viewer.

A Contributor can edit every file and upload new ones, but cannot move or delete files.

A Content manager can, by default, upload, edit, move and delete all files.

A Manager can do all of that and also manage who is a member.

Most people who touch a working drive need to add work and edit it. Far fewer need to delete or rearrange it. So the sensible default is the lowest role that lets someone do their job, with the higher roles as the exception.

The table on Google's Create a shared drive page adds one detail worth knowing before you migrate. It lists moving folders from My Drive into a shared drive as a Manager permission, and the limits page says Drive for desktop cannot make that move at all.

So if you are moving old folders across, do it in the browser, as a Manager, before you hand out lower roles.

Step 5: outside people, inside files

This is the line that makes shared drives worth the setup for a group like this one.

VALORAE works with editors who are outside the organisation. VALORAE Cast is a community of editors and creators, and editors who get good there can be routed to paid client work.

Google's Create a shared drive page says that when the organisation allows outside members, any content an external person contributes to a shared drive created inside the organisation is transferred to and owned by the organisation.

So an edit uploaded by an outside editor does not leave the drive with them. It stays where the venture can find it next month.

That cuts both ways, and we say so up front. An editor's work for a venture belongs in that venture's drive. Their own portfolio and practice files belong in their own My Drive, where they stay theirs.

The client side has the same question with higher stakes. VALORAE Media's post on who owns your social accounts when you hire an agency lists the shared drive among the things to settle before the first post, because the infrastructure around an account is owned by whoever pays for the seat.

Step 6: read the limits before you hit one

Most small businesses will never touch these numbers. They are still worth knowing, so here they are from Google's Shared drive limits page, read on 15 October 2026.

A shared drive can hold up to 500,000 items, counting files, folders, shortcuts and anything in the trash. Google says the cap counts items, not storage, and recommends staying well below it.

Each user can upload and copy 750 GB within 24 hours.

A shared drive can have up to 600 members, of which up to 100 can be groups.

Drive lists up to 1,000 shared drives in the left navigation.

None of those is a constraint for us today. The useful one is the first, because trash counts toward the cap. A drive that keeps every rejected cut forever is spending its allowance on files nobody will open.

Step 7: what this means if you work with a VALORAE venture

If you are an editor or a client, the drive you are invited to tells you which venture you are working with and what the files are for. If the name does not follow the venture-bar-job pattern, ask before you upload.

The group itself is three running ventures, VALORAE Arc, VALORAE Media and VALORAE Cast, plus one upcoming line, VALORAE Shop, where nothing has dropped. The drives follow the ventures, so there is no Shop working drive to be invited to.

And nobody from the group will ask for your password to show you a drive. Google handles the sign-in, and a drive invite opens in your own Google account.

The short version

• Put anything a business needs next month in a shared drive, never in one person's My Drive.
• Name each drive venture first, a bar, then the job.
• Split drives by who needs the files, not by file type.
• Give each person the lowest role that lets them do the work.
• Move old folders across in the browser, as a Manager, before handing out lower roles.
• Empty the trash on busy drives, because it counts toward the item cap.

The group's current facts, in one place, are at valoraehq.com.