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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