Move Google Drive to your own bucket
Google Drive is a nice office. It is a worse vault. Docs, PDFs, and dumps of old folders should live in a bucket you own if you want them to outlast a plan change.
This post is the move for Drive files. Not the photo library. Pictures belong in Move Google Photos to your own bucket.
1. Export Drive with Google Takeout
Open Google Takeout. Deselect everything. Turn Drive back on. Leave Photos off. You want the docs and files, not another copy of the camera roll.
Create the export. Google builds zip archives. A big Drive takes hours, sometimes a day. It will email you when the files are ready. Download them.
Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides come out as files. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or PDF. They are snapshots, not live docs.
Do not unpack this onto a laptop and call it done. The zips are the handoff. The bucket is the home.
2. Pick a bucket you own
You need S3-compatible object storage. Not another Drive clone.
For the price table, see the cheapest cloud object storage comparison.
This post does not walk the console again. If you do not have a bucket hooked up yet, follow how to connect a Backblaze B2 bucket and come back.
3. Upload through file.rocks
Sign in at file.rocks. Open Files on the bucket you just connected.
Drop the Takeout zips in. Or unpack them first and drop the folders. Either works. Wait until the transfers finish. Open a few PDFs and docs and make sure they open.
You are not copying into file.rocks storage. file.rocks is the UI. The objects land in your bucket.
4. What you lose
Be honest about this before you delete anything in Google.
You lose live Google Docs collaboration. The export is a file. Comments, suggesting mode, and five people in one doc do not come with it.
You lose Drive search. No more type-half-a-title and get the right sheet. A bucket is folders and filenames.
You lose desktop sync. Drive for desktop will not keep a folder on your laptop glued to this bucket. New files need a new habit: export again later, or upload through file.rocks.
You keep the files. You own the bucket. You can leave file.rocks, or B2, and the objects still sit there.
5. Then stop
Do not rebuild Google Drive. Do not hunt for a live-docs plugin on day one.
Open the files in file.rocks when you need a PDF. Keep the bucket paid.
If the next pile is pictures, that is a different export. Use Move Google Photos to your own bucket.