Feb 25, 2019

Duplicates Google Photos and Google Drive

I made the mistake of clicking "Sync photos & Videos from Google Drive" in Google photos, and all my photos are now duplicated, taking up virtually all my storage in Google Drive. I quickly unclicked this setting and it remains unchecked. If I go through and delete all the photos from my Google Drive, will this delete them from Google Photos? I know this seems like a stupid question, but I just want to be very sure before I start going through and deleting everything. Thanks!

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All Replies (9)

Google user

Feb 25, 2019

I don't understand why you got duplicates - then you must have stored the same pictures on Drive also - maybe long ago.

But by switching off the option, these dups are removed from Photos - so that problem is solved.

And what you have on Drive, can be deleted because that will take a lot of storage.

See the details on https://www.google.com/settings/storage

Maybe you still have the old Google Drive Sync app in use, else I don't understand why you have so much (old) pictures on Drive in normal folders. And you also may have started to use the fairly new Backup & Sync app which has uploaded all pictures to Photos, but also on Drive at a special location: https://drive.google.com/drive/computers

But that location is not synced by that option on Photos, but should not be deleted either.

Last edited Feb 26, 2019

Google user

Feb 25, 2019

Hello Nicolette,

Please don't delete anything as Sync photos & Videos from Google Drive does not use any storage. If you have storage problems it is due to another reason.

Please share you storage information with us and also your Backup and Sync settings, similar to

Regards,

Peter

Nicolette Lorraway

Original Poster

Feb 25, 2019

When I clicked 'sync', this folder was created in my Google Drive, which never disappeared and is taking up storage. And it scrolls forever.

Nicolette Lorraway

Original Poster

Feb 25, 2019

Apologies - I think my post earlier today may have been removed because of community settings??

Here are my Google Drive settings. I currently do not have anything syncing to my laptop because I don't have my own laptop.

and here are my google drive settings:

Nicolette Lorraway

Original Poster

Feb 25, 2019

And here are my google photo settings:

Nicolette Lorraway

Original Poster

Feb 25, 2019

And the final thing that might be relevant is:

Google user

Feb 25, 2019

It is safe to Remove the Google Photos folder, but it normally does not use any storage. The numbers you see are the file size in Google Photos. If you click to highlight one of the jpg files and click on the (i) below the Red N at top right, the select the Details pane you should see Storage used = 0 bytes.

At the top of the Settings page click View items using storage to get a list to decide what to delete.

You might also look at Gmail to find large attachments to delete

Don't forget to empty the Drive trash as the storage is still used until it is emptied.

Google user

Feb 25, 2019

In Gmail you can search by size, start off with something like 100MB and lower it as you go

Google user

Feb 26, 2019

The option to show Google Photos in Google Drive must have been on in 2017, but for reasons unknown the folder got not correctly filled by Google because you should not have an endless list, but subfolders by year and per month. And then these monthfolders (01, 02 until 12) are filled with much less files.

But like Peter said: these files may look as duplicates, but normally they take no storage. And you can delete the folder completely to ged rid of this useless heap which is unsuitable for syncing to desktop.

But then there still must be other files in normal folders on Google Drive that take 5 GB of storage - just use https://drive.google.com/drive/quota to see where these non-zero bytes are stored and if they can be deleted without loosing your archive. Maybe still synced via the old Google Drive app.

About Gmail: attachments are limited to 25 MB, so it is a bit unlikely that there will be mails over 100 MB :-) Just choose "All mails" in the left column in your desktopbrowser (under More) and then select the oldest right up. Then you maybe astonished that your archive is still there for many years and then you can start selecting the full page and trash that amount etc, etc. until Januar 1, 2018

If you can't delete that archive for some formal reason, you may use Take-out for Gmail to make a backup on Mac first before starting with cleaning-up. See https://www.google.com/settings/takeout

If you keep your mail until the start of last year, Gmail still may use a couple of GB's - even after emptying its trash. But you can't do better :-)

Good luck