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I like to think I'm tech savvy, but reading back this makes me sound like a boomer 🙈🤦😂😂😂😂😇
Anyway, is anyone a guru with Google Drive? I want to use it to sync files between two computers - a Windows PC and my Mac laptop. Plus, having a cloud backup will be useful. On the face of it, this is easy, but I seem to have run into problems with duplicated folders.
I want:
PC (Windows) <--> The cloud <--> my laptop (Mac) , but I'd settle for:
PC (Windows) --> The cloud <--> my laptop (Mac)
The crux of the issue seems to be that somewhere along the line, the Google Drive app has moved my Google Drive folder back to a default location. I think this happened recently, possibly when I was forced to update the software to the new App. This happened on both the PC and the Laptop.
It now won't let me change the folder location back because the old location "is not empty" - it's filled with the unsynced but locally updated versions of my files. Obviously I can delete the Google Drive folder and start again, but then I end up with a mess of unsync'd files and no easy way to identify which files are current.
On both the Google Drive app and website, there's a section for 'Computers' where I can see folders I've shared on other computers. But using this option won't sync files between computers, I don't think. Should I be sharing "Folders from your computer" or sharing the whole thing ("Folders from Drive")? At the moment it's set to the latter, to mirror files (for both the desktop and Mac).
FWIW I'm on a .ac.uk account so Google's consumer-side chat (which actually seems quite responsive) won't even try and help.
I guess what I'm getting at is: how is this bloody software designed? It feels like I'm forcing it to do something it doesn't really like, which has worked until recently but has now exploded in a mess of unsync'd files. Is it designed so that the 'Drive' is cloud-based and not really supposed to be used for syncing files? And the 'Computers' section is what I should be using for mirroring files?
im certainly no tech expert, indeed the photos app and drive/photos used to completely bamboozle me. a quick look now would suggest photos has been removed from drive now and its purely 'normal' folders.
i still get frustrated with photos, i take photos with my phone, they appear in my photos app on the phone, yet when i open 'photos' on my laptop theyre always months behind and i have to try to physically 'force' them to the laptop by p1ssing about with unsyncing then syncing again and waiting ages. tbh google drive and photos dont seem very intuitive to me at all, i dont like them.
i thought that Drive was all purely cloud based and that you just uploaded stuff to it and then wherever you opened it up you accessed the same files. so no need to 'sync' anything at all, it should do it automatically.
however, just tested that theory and opened 'drive' up on both laptop and phone, and there are more files available on my phone than the pc (old macbook). no idea why, like i said, it just doesnt 'work' for me.
if i click the 'computers' option i dont have anything listed which is correct for me, it says 'using drive for a desktop' or something which i dont understand anyway.
maybe just as well i dont understand it as i think id find it frustrating using it. i'll keep an eye on this thread in case a lightbulb moment appears to me and i find that it is better than i perceive it to be.
sorry, havent been much help as i dont understand exactly why youre trying to sync files the way you are, i thought you just uploaded stuff and used it as a different (backup) drive to your pc and accessed them from anywhere that youre logged in to your account.
Can't help, but my laptop (Mac) had been nagging me to update the app for a while, so this is a good warning to look out for the mess it is about to create.
Correct, the 'computers' bit of Drive is not what you want. That's for accessing files on a computer from anywhere, which is useful but not what you are trying to do.
Google Drive will keep a copy of your data in the cloud, and enable you to access and edit the data from many computers, but I don't think it will be able to work out for itself what your latest files are.
Unfortunately I reckon you'll have to do that manually, create a new 'good' folder on one computer, enable Drive and go from there. Backup everything before you start 🙂
So, I've spent all morning unjumbling my files, but I think I've got it figured.
The PC was sharing both a "folder on My Computer" and also Mirroring a folder. Which was the same folder online, but at different mount points. Also I had somehow got a Google Drive folder inside a Google Drive folder.
It looks as though something got broken on both the PC and Mac sides in a software update at some point along the way. The software wants to differentiate between sharing, streaming and mirroring. I think once you get your head around that 'Design Language' it kind of makes sense. But my folders were already very jumbled because its been setup wrong for a while.