I’m working on a project where we want to connect our application with Google Drive for uploading and downloading files. The main challenge is that we have around 100 GB worth of data sitting on our current server that needs to be moved to Google Drive. My plan is to create some kind of background process that will handle this migration gradually over time. But I’m worried about hitting API limits or getting blocked. Does anyone know what kind of restrictions Google Drive has when you’re making lots of API requests for transferring large amounts of data like this?
i had a similar prob! splitting files and taking breaks between uploads really helps. also, using resumable uploads for those big files is a smart move. just keep an eye on the rate limits or u might run into some issues.
I migrated 80GB to Google Drive last month. Here’s what actually worked: chunk your uploads and watch your quota in the API console. Google gives you a 750GB daily upload limit, but requests per second will kill you first. I batched smaller files together and used multipart uploads for anything under 5MB. Larger files got resumable uploads. Took two weeks running 24/7, but never got blocked because I added retry logic with exponential backoff. Pro tip nobody mentioned: Google watches your API patterns. Start small and ramp up gradually or you’ll trigger their abuse detection.
I dealt with this same thing last year. Google Drive API limits you to 1000 requests per 100 seconds per user. What saved me was exponential backoff - the API throws specific error codes when you hit the limit, so you can catch those and retry. For big transfers, batch your smaller operations and use the upload progress callbacks to track speeds. Google will sometimes bump your quota if you ask nicely and explain why you need it for business. Background processing is smart, but log everything so you can pick up where you left off when things break.