Aug 13, 2021
Saga: Migration from Backup & Sync to Drive for Desktop
In Backup & Sync I had relatively unimportant files in My Drive and did not have them set up to sync with my computer. My principal documents which I always wanted synced were stored under Computers | Yoga Laptop | Documents. Those reliably synced to my PC at D:\Documents for years.
I did some research on Drive for Desktop and decided I did not want ALL my files on my hard drive to sync to Google Drive. I only wanted "Documents" folder to sync (as I had been doing for years). I understood that using the "Stream" setting would enable me to replicate my Backup & Sync experience, only syncing D:/Documents with a new drive and a new subfolder: G:/Documents.
Upon switching to Drive for Desktop, only the files that had been in My Drive were visible in Windows Explorer under the new drive G: My principal documents were totally missing. I spent 30 minutes with one Google One support rep who told me to upload D:/Documents to G: but there was insufficient space for them in my Google Drive account. So I spoke to another rep. For 2 hours and 47 minutes with multiple emails back and forth and multiple screen shots attached!
It turns out that any folders or files that were in "Computers" or any of its subfolders in Backup and Sync can't show up in the G: drive in Drive for Desktop. Full stop. They can't show up although using the web interface (Drive on the web), they remained in their original location, under Computers | Yoga Laptop.
So the files were still on Google Drive (in the cloud) taking up 15.4GB of space which was why I could not upload from D:/Documents to G:/ - not enough space for the same exact files to be uploaded to the cloud. They were there but I just couldn't see them in Drive for Desktop - only on the web interface which included the "Computers" section.
Meantime, the Google One Support rep insisted a number of times that there was no way to have selected folders sync using the Streaming option. If I wanted ANY documents to sync, my only option was to choose the option to "Mirror" and have ALL files on my PC also in Google Drive. He conferred with "Specialists" at Google about 5 times to confirm and reconfirm this (and he wouldn't let me talk to those Green Berets directly). However, what he insisted to me turned out to be wrong. I proved this during a screen-sharing session by creating a small Word document, saving it to my D:/Documents drive and having it appear immediately in G:/My Drive, albeit NOT in a folder named "Documents". And, note, this is with the Stream setting rather than the Mirror setting.
The reality of the situation (which I came up with rather than the support rep) caused the rep to grant me additional Google Drive space (for 48 hours) so I could upload D:/Documents to G:/My Drive. I believe this largely worked although 196 files fewer are found in G:/My Drive/Documents than should be there. That represents 1.7% of the files that should have uploaded.
I thought that, once the upload was completed, I would need to go into G:/My Drive in Windows Explorer, right click on "Documents" and select "Offline Access" ---> "Available Offline" so the entire folder would sync but I didn't have to do that - the setting to sync was retained as evidenced by a green checkmark next to each subfolder under Documents in Windows Explorer in both the G: and D: drives.
Tomorrow I go into Drive on the web and delete the 15.4GB Documents folder under Computers | Yoga Laptop before the 48 hours expires and my account has insufficient space, leaving the new Documents folder in its new location under "My Drive". Fingers crossed that sync works properly in the coming days and that Google One support can somehow recover the 196 missing files whose identity I can't determine among the nearly 11,000 files that should have been uploaded.
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All Replies (14)
Aug 22, 2021
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I had asked you to confirm to me that you had properly and accurately documented for your engineers the full extent of the issues I face after switching from Backup & Sync to Drive for Desktop by sending me a transcript of your documentation. Your brief 37-word summary is not only far from thorough but misleading. The following is the actual situation at this juncture:
(1) Approximately 130 missing files of the 190 or so total missing flles are Google Drive files -- they are Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides.
(2) They cannot be found using Search in my G: drive nor can they be found in Google Drive on the Web.
(3) They ARE found in my D: drive on my hard disk but they are ONLY links to the cloud. They DO NOT open from my hard drive as Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents as you insisted they would. They exist ONLY as Google-formatted files and ONLY in the cloud (on Google's servers). You tried to prove to me that they are NOT housed by Google by sending me a link stating that Google-formatted files do not consume any of my allotted space on Google Drive. However, what that means is simply that Google does not COUNT THEM against my allotted space. The CONTENT of those files ARE, in fact, on Google servers. In my D: drive, there is no CONTENT. Only links to the files housed in the cloud on Google servers. I should not have to prove this to you since you are a Google One Support supervisor. However, several Google support statements prove what I spent half an hour trying to convince you. Among them:
"Set up offline access for PDFs, Microsoft Office files, and more on your desktopYou can make your non-Google formatted files available for offline access when you lack connection to the Internet. These cached files sync back to the cloud when you're online, so the latest version is available on all your devices." Also:
"Files created by Docs, Sheets, Slides, or Forms open in your browser. Other files open in their regular applications on your computer."
(4) Upon double-clicking to view the links to Google-formatted files found ONLY in my HDD's D: drive, they open in my browser (as they should) but a prompt comes up stating that they are in TRASH.
(5) I can take them out of trash but only individually. Soon after I do this, they become available in G: drive and also in Drive on the web. HOWEVER, they are not placed in the folder where they originally were located (and synced successfully) when I was using Backup & Sync. So for each one of the ~130 files, I need to manually / individually call them up, take them out of trash, decide where they should be located in the folder structure and move them to those locations. After I described this lengthy manual process to you, you then offered that I should undertake that process as the "solution" to the problem.
(6) It appears that Google-formatted files which I had shared with others now are only available to me as VIEW ONLY. A prompt tells me I have to contact the owner to get permission to edit the files. I AM THE OWNER of those files. I need a solution to this.
(7) Microsoft Edge (which is based upon Chromium) is my default browser. Every time I open Drive in MS Edge, the following prompt displays immediately (without me clicking on any folder or file): "This folder is in your trash. This folder is in the trash because it is in a folder that was trashed. To view this folder, you'll need to restore the folder containing it." That prompt pertains to THE ENTIRE MY DRIVE TOP-LEVEL FOLDER. As you know, both My Drive and Trash contain almost all the same files - 15.3GB of them. If I restore what is actually in Trash to My Drive, I might wind up with 10,700+ duplicate files. And I fear your solution to that problem, should it arise, will be to manually delete each of the thousands of duplicates.
(8) Please note that the prompt does not appear if I open Drive in my Chrome browser. If you suggest making Chrome my default browser, that will NOT be an acceptable solution as use of Google Drive's web interface is only a small fraction of my browser-based activity.
Much of what I described above pertains to the ~130 Google-formatted files. However, an additional ~60 other files are missing and I can't determine which files those are.
IMMEDIATE ACTION NEEDED
All of the problems, which I have now spent 9 days, talking for at least 12 hours with 4 Google One Support reps, plus another 10 hours uncovering those issues, with more than 20 back-and-forth emails and sending those reps some 15 screenshots, and being forced to pay for an additional 100GB of storage to my account, all stem from your engineers and product managers not providing the means for Google Drive for Desktop to recognize and make available to users any and all folders and files they had stored under "Computers" while using Backup & Sync. This is despite the fact that Google states:
"Folders on your computer sync to the Computers tab in Google Drive." Found here regarding the Stream option which is the option I am using: Use Google Drive for desktop - Google Drive Help
But when I check if that is, in fact, the case by clicking on "Computers" in Google Drive Web, the following prompt appears: "NO COMPUTERS SYNCING. To sync files on your computer with Google Drive install Backup & Sync on your computer."
Three weeks from now Google Drive will automatically empty everything that is in Trash - 15.3GB, 10,700+ files. If, in fact, all files found under My Drive are in Trash, ALL MY FILES WILL BE WIPED OUT - GONE FOREVER. I NEED TO SPEAK DIRECTLY TO A TOP-LEVEL SPECIALIST WHO TRULY UNDERSTANDS HOW GOOGLE DRIVE FOR DESKTOP WORKS.
PLEASE SEND THE ENTIRE 20+ EMAILS TO YOUR ENGINEERS AS YOU PROMISED SO THEY CAN SEE THE SCREENSHOTS AND THIS SUMMARY OF THE REMAINING ISSUES RATHER THAN RELYING ON THE SCANT AND MISLEADING SUMMARY YOU PROVIDED.
Sep 15, 2021
The last 'supervisor' I spoke with (after I asked whether she uses Drive for Desktop) even admitted that her and her team have not yet switched over to the new app and have stuck with Backup and Sync for now...
Sep 29, 2021
Sep 29, 2021
And Google didn't even give us the option to stick with Backup and sync while they troubleshoot Drive for Desktop. It practically forced us to update by removing VERY IMPORTANT features for so many users and ruining our work with stupid and annoying bugs. I ask myself: Why? Why, if Backup and sync was working well, did you replace it with one that doesn't have all the old features and that works badly? PLEASE, FIX IT.
Sep 29, 2021
Now Google Drive forcibly wants to download more than 1TB of files to my PC, otherwise I can't upload new items. Can you explain to me what kind of madness is it? It doesn't work at all!
Thousands of professionals use Google Drive every day and I'm sure many of them are having huge problems managing their work. That's not fair!
I personally had to block the synchronization; this means that I have to manually upload the dozens of files per day that I produce. All this because Google preferred to launch a poorly functioning and limited app rather than really commit. The new features? "Notify me when someone edits a shared file in Microsoft Office." But with all due respect, what kind of improvement is that? What's new? !! Nothing! It is a disaster.
Sep 29, 2021
I am sure you didn't read the earlier comments or help articles, but it is still possible to synchronise only selected folders, if you choose the Streaming option or the local backup options.
It is inconvenient that any saved paths need to be updated to work with the new virtual drives, and there should have been some kind of migration, like creating symlinks to the new locations, and automatically migrating settings, but it still works. (This is actually the implementation they should have offered years ago, rather than the odd kludge that was Backup & Sync. Many of us got used to its quirks, but it really was odd.)
Oct 11, 2021
I think this upgrade is half-arsed and irresponsible and I will probably change to another backup provider. Luckily I backed up everything before the upgrade!!!!
Oct 21, 2021
Last edited Oct 21, 2021
Oct 21, 2021
Last edited Oct 21, 2021
Nov 1, 2021
Nov 13, 2021
Nov 17, 2021
On my older Windows 10 PC the migration seems to have worked except that it deleted all my local files, leaving my mapped drive letter G empty. The new offline cache is in a format that makes the individual files and folders unrecognizable. I do not like it. I am pissed of and spitting mad. Will probably leave Google Drive. Won't lose files. Have independent backups.
The new Google Drive no longer appears as an object to which a drive letter can be mapped, so I am forced to upgrade my Backup4All app to a version that can see the folders and files in any cloud location. I am not comfortable just backing up the local cache because I can't access or verify individual files and folders in it except using the Google Drive Desktop app, which I do not trust. I've seen mention of a third party utility for Android devices but haven't seen anything for PCs yet. You can never assume you have a backup until you have successfully restored one, and that has to be done periodically. A cloud backup is great as long as you have reliable internet access and your bill is paid, and only if you have control of it.