Google Drive use and access

Google Drive is a cloud storage service, with related functionality to Microsoft’s OneDrive, Apple’s iCloud, and Dropbox. With a Google account, you have typically access to My Drive for personal storage and Shared Drives for team collaboration (upon invitation by someone with a Google Workspace account)
In Curvebend we use two shared drives:
Proj Curvebend - for all organisational matters related to Curvebend, including reporting, meetings, and output
Data Curvebend - for all data collected and and managed in Curvebend

You can access your My Drive and any Shared Drives you belong to at drive.google.com. It’s important to keep your files well-organized, for example by categorizing them based on different papers, projects, or datasets you are working on. This will help streamline your workflow and improve collaboration. 

An important difference between My Drive and a Shared Drive
Note that there is an critical difference between data on My Drive versus a Shared Drive. If you are not aware of this difference you may loose substantial dataset or information in the future. On My Drive, you can share a folder with a collaborator such as a student. But if the account of your collaborator goes away, also the files they contributed go away as they keep belonging to the owner who put them there. File in a Shared Drive belong to the organization (U Groningen) and are independent of the account who contributed them. So it is highly recommended to use the latter for research data management. Access to whole drives or folders within them can be set at a great level of detail. 

Drive for Desktop
When using Google drive frequently and local access of files is needed (other than can be arranged through Sheets and published links) it is a good idea to use Drive for Desktop. This creates a copy of your  Shared Drives and My Drive on your  local computer and keeps it in sync with the most recent version on the web.  Per folder and file it can be specified of the data really exist on your drive, or just as a link, downloading them when needed  (opened). 

You can develop a similar workflow using any of the other cloud storage services Microsoft’s OneDrive, Apple’s iCloud, and Dropbox.

✅ How to Create a Google Account Without Gmail

Why? 

All CurveBend project information will be managed and shared in a Shared Google Drive. 

Not needed by who? 

Note that all University of Groningen accounts are also Google Account. So if you have a rug.nl account you do not need to do this. 

Also if your primary email address is a gmail account, you do not need to do this. 

For the others how to set this up: 

1. Go to https://accounts.google.com/signup
   
   

2. Click “Create account” and select “For myself” or “To manage my business”, depending on your needs.
   
   

3. Enter your first and last name.
   
   

4. Click “Use my current email address instead”.
   
   

5. Enter your existing email address (e.g., yourname@outlook.com).
   
   

6. Create and confirm a new password (this should be unique and not the same as your email password).
   
   

7. Google will send a verification code to your email. Open your inbox, find the code, and enter it to verify your email address.
   
   

8. Follow the prompts to add optional recovery information (like a phone number) and accept the terms of service.Google Help+3mountairymd.gov+3Google Help+3
   
   

Once completed, you’ll have a fully functional Google Account that you can use to access services like Google Drive, Docs, YouTube, Google Meet, and more—all without a Gmail address.