Mount Google Drive in a Colab Notebook to Access Your Files

Desired outcome

Mount your Google Drive inside a Google Colab notebook so that you can read, write, and manipulate files stored in Drive as if they were local to the notebook’s runtime.

Prerequisites

• A Google account that can access both Google Colab and Google Drive.
• An existing or newly created Colab notebook (File → New notebook).
• A folder in Google Drive whose contents you want to work with (e.g., MyDrive/project-data).

Procedure

1. Open the notebook and insert a new code cell.
2. Paste the following import and mount command:

from google.colab import drive

drive.mount('/content/drive')

3. Run the cell (Shift+Enter). A prompt appears with an authorization link.
4. Click the link, sign in with your Google account if needed, and grant Colab access to Drive.
5. Copy the authentication code displayed on the consent page.
6. Paste the code into the cell’s input box and press Enter.
7. The cell will finish execution and display 'Mounted at /content/drive'.

Expected checks

• In the left‑hand file browser, expand the /content directory; you should see a folder named drive.
• Navigate to /content/drive/MyDrive (or the subfolder you need) and verify that your files appear.
• Alternatively, run a shell command to list contents:

!ls -l /content/drive/MyDrive

• If you see the expected file names, the mount succeeded.

Recovery options

• If the authentication step fails (e.g., you entered an incorrect code or the link expired), you can reset the runtime and try again:
• Select Runtime → Factory reset from the notebook menu.
• Confirm the reset; this clears all mounted drives and variables.
• Re‑run the mount cell from step 2.
• If you prefer to keep the runtime but want to clear a failed mount, execute:

drive.flush_and_unmount()

• Then rerun the original drive.mount command.

Limits and safety notes

• The mounted Drive is tied to the notebook’s runtime. Closing the notebook, disconnecting, or runtime recycling will automatically unmount the Drive; you must repeat the authentication on the next session.
• Mounting grants the notebook full read/write access to your entire Drive. Avoid running untrusted or third‑party code that could modify or delete files unintentionally.
• Performance depends on your network latency to Google Drive; large file transfers may be slower than local disk access.

Quick verification checklist

1. Run !ls /content/drive/MyDrive and confirm you see expected folders.
2. Open a file from Drive, e.g., %cat /content/drive/MyDrive/notebooks/example.ipynb
3. Write a test file: !echo 'test' > /content/drive/MyDrive/test.txt and verify it appears in the UI.