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Google Drive for Desktop Query

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  • 24-11-2021 1:17pm
    #1
    Chavways
    Registered Users Posts: 1,905 ✭✭✭


    Hi All,

    Just looking for some help with Google Drive for Desktop. For the last 4-5 years I have used the legacy Backup & Sync app by Google on my PC to sync a variety of local PC folders to my Google Drive account on the cloud. With Backup & Sync I was able to just right click on the folder on my PC and tell it to sync with Google Drive so that it would be visible on the Google Drive app or website if I accessed it from another device. The utilization of Backup & Sync didn't seem to take up any noticeable disc space on my PC either.

    Fast forward to October 2021 and Google have now replaced the Backup & Sync program with a new Google Drive app for desktop. As far as I can see, the app has now made an imaginary HDD on my PC containing any content I have synced to Google Drive. However, it seems now that when I go to sync local PC folders to my Google Drive account on the cloud, for some reason the app wants to duplicate the files from the HDD they are stored in over to the imaginary HDD the Google Drive app has created, thus using twice as much local HDD space. I am approaching 500GB of files that I have synced (photos & videos) so now I have 1TB committed to this.

    Just wondering if anyone has figured out a workaround for the above as I cannot afford to give Google Drive half of my disc space just to sync files. From what I have checked on their FAQs and blog posts, it doesn't seem to be customizable but I'm finding it hard to believe that this is the only way to do it. Thanks.



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    #2
    Spocker
    Moderators Posts: 6,853 ✭✭✭Spocker


    You're syncing the specific folders in Settings->Preferences? These synced files should show up under Computers in Drive on the web, rather than in your Drive folder. The files in the drive folder aren't downloaded automatically, only streamed on demand, or when you choose "Make Available Offline"


    What you could do is upload all your files into Drive, make them "available offline" in your local Drive folder, and then delete the other copy, in the other folder?



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    #3
    Chavways
    Registered Users Posts: 1,905 ✭✭✭Chavways


    https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118216435#Comment_118216435

    Yep syncing the specific folders themselves so they show up in the Computers tab on Drive on the web. When I used to do this in the past it would just display whatever is in the original folders on the web but in the new Google Drive fore desktop, it's copying all of these files to the imaginary Google Drive HDD on my PC and then syncing that imaginary drive with Drive on the web.

    I want to avoid putting all my eggs in the Google basket by using the My Drive upload & make available offline option because the files themselves are very important to me. I have them in a 2x HDD Raid 0 set up on the PC and had been using Google Drive as my cloud back up then if anything went wrong locally.



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    #4
    cormie
    Registered Users Posts: 20,790 ✭✭✭✭cormie


    Are you sure the imaginary drive is taking up space on your HDD though? From what I can see, it's not actually taking up space? I was confused as I thought I had a 2TB drive on my laptop, and in my computer I now have:


    Local Disk C: 114GB free of 952GB

    and

    Google Drive G: 109GB free of 952GB (which is strange as I'm only using up 114GB of my google drive space anyway)


    but I Think I may only have a 1TB drive on my laptop, which would make sense as I doubt it would just chop my local hardware drive in the laptop in half assigning 50% of it to Google Drive? So whatever about my Google Drive Folder showing an odd percentage of it being used, I Don't think it's actually eating into my local laptop HDD space.


    I was actually coming to this forum to ask if anyone is backing up their entire system with Google Drive for Desktop?

    I have a plan with Crashplan, but to be honest, Googles 2TB plan at €99 a year would do me space wise. I'm paying for 100GB add on anyway, so it would be an extra €80 per year, and I could do away with my crashplan sub which is costing me around €11 a month anyway.


    Something weird happened to me though.. when Google Photos used to upload video and photos using 0 storage space, I had some files taking up 0 space on my Google account, even thought they may have been 900MB or whatever, and what seems to have happened since switching from BU&S to GDFD, is that GDFD is now counting that 900MB (and the other similar files and their size) against my allowance... and I had enough files using 0 storage space on Google, that when this happened, I went from being 40GB below my allowance, to now being a little bit above it so I would have had to pay to increase beyond the 100GB plan I was on, but I got support to give me a trial of the 2TB plan while I sort it out, but I was thinking if I can back up the important stuff on the computer, like the App Data or App Data/Roaming folders, that I may just do this along with all the other stuff I have in Drive, and that'll pretty much be everything backed up for €99 a year.



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