Migrate OneDrive data without disruption
Quest On Demand Migration is a OneDrive migration tool built to move OneDrive sites to new tenants without losing what matters. It preserves file and folder structures, user and sharing permissions, and key metadata so end users keep continued access after migration. You can also filter files by folder, type, date or size and schedule tasks to fit your organization’s needs.
Highlighted Features
Discover OneDrive sites to plan your migration
A migration can't start without knowing what's on the source tenant. ODM, a OneDrive migration tool, collects statistics — the count and size of files — for source OneDrive sites to support migration planning. Target sites can be pre-provisioned via PowerShell (up to 24 hours for thousands of users) or provisioned as part of the migration task.
Preserve user and sharing permissions for continued access
User mapping maps permissions on the target tenant to match the source, covering internal users, internal groups and guest (external) users. ODM can also set shared permissions as direct file permissions, avoiding a flood of share-request messages. Maintaining continuity of security and access to migrated files is a critical business requirement for any OneDrive migration tool.
Migrate file versions for every document
Many tools migrate only the latest version of a file, erasing change history. ODM is a OneDrive data migration tool that can migrate just the last version when speed is the priority or migrate a subset of versions or all versions when business and regulatory requirements demand it — so you keep the complete history your organization needs to stay compliant.
Knowledge Center
Datasheet: On Demand Migration OneDrive
Because Microsoft OneDrive for Business is as critical as email for most organizations, having a OneDrive migration tool is essential.
Case Study: Professional services firm completes 12 acquisitions in one year
With help from Quest migration solutions and professional services, the company completed about a dozen successful acquisitions year after year, including one involving 11,000 users across 200 offices.
FAQ
Yes. But even with a solid OneDrive migration tool, there has to be enough available space on the target OneDrive. Initially, OneDrive for Business users have 1TB of storage. OneDrive administrators can increase this to 5TB of storage per user. You can contact Microsoft to provision OneDrive storage up to 25TB. Beyond 25 TB, storage is provisioned as 25 TB SharePoint team sites to individual users. That is a lot of storage space and should allow a user to transfer all OneDrive to another drive.
You can store up to 30 million files in a SharePoint library; but Microsoft recommends syncing no more than 300,000 files across all document libraries.
Although, you can move a large number of files over time, Microsoft recommends uploading batches of no more than 100 items at a time. You could be manually migrating files for a long, long time.
Thus, you should consider the performance impact on moving all your OneDrive files even though you may have space to do so.
The difference between copying and moving is that copying a file makes a duplicate of the file or directory in another location without affecting the original content. Moving a file transfers the original file or directory to another location and leaves nothing behind.
You can connect to more than one OneDrive on your computer: OneDrive for Business and OneDrive Personal. In File Explorer, you can move files between the folders in these OneDrive sites by selecting the files, drag and drop them in the new location.
The files you move from OneDrive Personal to OneDrive for Business are essentially recognized as new files. Thus, these files don’t retain metadata details such as Modified and Modified By.
Note: If you are moving files within the same disk drive, it will be faster than copying. This is because only the file path is modified for a moved file, the actual data stays in place on the disk. That is why a file move appears to run faster than a file copy.
Yes, OneDrive can store files locally. You will see the files in File Explorer. However, you can also save space by making files available online only. The files appear in File Explorer; but a cloud icon is displayed with each file. The files will not download locally until you open it.
Alternatively, you set files to Always keep on this device. These files appear with a green circle with a white check mark. These files are always available on your device – even when you are offline. But they are also available in OneDrive Online.
All OneDrive files are stored in the Microsoft cloud. OneDrive for Business is based on SharePoint. Each OneDrive for Business site is like a document library in a SharePoint site. Thus, your OneDrive files are stored in a document library; but the user interface represents a file explorer experience relied upon by many OneDrive migration tools. OneDrive files can also be stored locally on your device on a disk drive.
Yes. People don't stop working just because IT is moving their files, especially when a migration runs during business hours rather than a quiet cutover weekend. A good OneDrive migration tool handles this with a delta migration: after the initial pass copies the bulk of the content, a follow-up pass syncs only what changed, without recopying everything. Quest On Demand Migration supports migrations for this exact scenario.
Migrating into an already active target tenant adds a second risk: overwriting newer data. ODM addresses this with options to skip outdated source files or write a copy instead, so nothing is lost in transition. The takeaway is that you don't need to freeze user activity. Move the bulk of the data ahead of time and use delta passes to close the gap, reducing downtime for end users.