What in the world is up with Google Drive?

[thecomputerguy]

I personally use Google for storing files for myself and have never had an issue with it. They recently removed backup and sync in favor of their G Drive streaming tool. Backup and sync was a little archaic as it required a full copy of the files on all computers that had backup and sync installed on. The new tool maps a G Drive to the system allowing direct access to the files without having to sync them but it is SO DAMN SLOW. It's like mapping a drive to a cloud folder and browsing through it is SLOW for shared drives for clients using G Suite.

I have a client that was doing local sharing with Carbonite for backup and I sold them on the fact that I could push the data to a shared Google Drive folder that they would be able to access through their mobile devices. It works, but browsing or saving files through the G Drive is slower than ****!

I'm thinking I need to move them to Dropbox or something to avoid this G Drive mapping thing. You cannot choose to locally sync a company wide shared folder. When you switch it from "Stream" to "Mirror Files" it only mirrors the data in the USERS drive, not the company shared folder. So you still have to browse through the slow ass G Drive that takes forever to populate in any explorer window.

Anyone with any experience on this before I move them to Dropbox?

Ideally they would goto O365 with Teams and Sharepoint but they are pretty locked into Google as they use the Google web interface for mail and don't use Outlook.

Maybe I make a folder in the owners personal drive then share it to the employees that way so that they can locally sync it. Wow what a nightmare, Dropbox handles this SOOOO much better.

Mapping drives to an internet server SUCKS.

 

[Diggs]

I think it's a setting with the default being streaming only.

 

[rhsiv]

I may be telling you something your already know, or answering the wrong question here. But we use this internally in our company.

What we have everyone do is Add the Shared folder to My Drive (through Google Drive web interface) and then it will sync. I understand you may not want to do that, to eliminate confusion. We set our entire Google Drive up intentionally on the front end to operate this was, and I know that typically organizations do not have the foresight to do that. But, if that would work, once it's added to your drive it will then mirror files directly to the user's hard drive and speed up browsing.

 

[thecomputerguy]

I may be telling you something your already know, or answering the wrong question here. But we use this internally in our company.

What we have everyone do is Add the Shared folder to My Drive (through Google Drive web interface) and then it will sync. I understand you may not want to do that, to eliminate confusion. We set our entire Google Drive up intentionally on the front end to operate this was, and I know that typically organizations do not have the foresight to do that. But, if that would work, once it's added to your drive it will then mirror files directly to the user's hard drive and speed up browsing.

Can you walk me through this? I'm not seeing it.

 

[thecomputerguy]

I think it's a setting with the default being streaming only.

View attachment 13175

The problem with this is it will only mirror files that are on "My Drive" it does not mirror anything in the "Shared Drives"


My Drive is the users personally Google Drive where as the Shared Drive is company data

 

[rhsiv]

Can you walk me through this? I'm not seeing it.

Ok, obviously you want to make sure that you have room for these folders to sync to the individual machines, but otherwise you could do this without having to touch each computer your working on, assuming that your mirror settings are already configured for that computer.

Give this a shot, I still don't know that I'm sure that this will solve your problem. However, once you're done these folders will no longer be in "Shared Drives" in the desktop application, but will appear under My Drive even though they are still owned by another user. This should cause them to sync to the machine which will make the browsing experience must faster.

1. Log in to the Google account that you need to make the change on.
2. Go to the Google Drive web interface in your browser.
3. In the left hand column, select "Shared with Me"
4. In "Shared With Me" find the folder that the user needs and Right Click on it
5. Select "Add Shortcut to My Drive"
6. Select your location: My Drive > (Anywhere you want this folder to be) We usually put them in the root
7. This folder will begin to sync to the hard drive of the computer for faster browsing.

 

[thecomputerguy]

Ok, obviously you want to make sure that you have room for these folders to sync to the individual machines, but otherwise you could do this without having to touch each computer your working on, assuming that your mirror settings are already configured for that computer.

Give this a shot, I still don't know that I'm sure that this will solve your problem. However, once you're done these folders will no longer be in "Shared Drives" in the desktop application, but will appear under My Drive even though they are still owned by another user. This should cause them to sync to the machine which will make the browsing experience must faster.

1. Log in to the Google account that you need to make the change on.
2. Go to the Google Drive web interface in your browser.
3. In the left hand column, select "Shared with Me"
4. In "Shared With Me" find the folder that the user needs and Right Click on it
5. Select "Add Shortcut to My Drive"
6. Select your location: My Drive > (Anywhere you want this folder to be) We usually put them in the root
7. This folder will begin to sync to the hard drive of the computer for faster browsing.

I think I figured it out ... I used the owners account to create a new shared folder in his "My Drive" and shared it with the company, then turned on mirror files.

On the web interface logged in as the owner I moved each folder from the "Shared Drive" to the owners Shared Folder in his My Drive. I did this on the backend to prevent any additional uploading of files on the frontend, and just let the backend handle it.

Then I went into "Shared with Me" under the employee accounts and "Shift+Z+Left Click" add to "My Drive"

We are now in the process of syncing 130GB of data to several computers. Not ideal but I need to get them back to work. What an absolutely terrible product for a desktop application. I understand that a lot of GSuite users are going to live almost entirely in gmail.com but good lord, this tool is AWFUL. Backup & Sync was so much simpler.

Dropbox and OneDrive handle this SO MUCH BETTER.

I may end up just moving them to dropbox so we don't need to sync 130GB of data every time they want to add a computer. That's rediculous! At least with Dropbox you can remove the files off your computer and just use their cloud sync. Same with OneDrive. With this new software from Google there is no way to get the data off your system, you're stuck lugging around TONS of data locally just to make this work.

That or use their slow ass virtual drive.

 

[thecomputerguy]

Un F*cking believable ... after 5 hours of syncing across multiple computers the guy comes into the office today and what is the first thing he does? Cut and Paste the team folder onto the desktop essentially making drive think the folder was deleted, and now needs to be full resynced ..... UNBELIVLABLAEEEEE

 

[rhsiv]

OH MAN! That gave me a good laugh. Sorry dude... that really sucks... but isn't that just the job we do? This job would be a lot easier if there weren't users... hahaha

 

[thecomputerguy]

OH MAN! That gave me a good laugh. Sorry dude... that really sucks... but isn't that just the job we do? This job would be a lot easier if there weren't users... hahaha

Now in the web interface the "Team" folder has been removed my My Drive. When I attempt to re-add it I get a server error now and it won't let me re-add it ... maybe because it's trying to catch up from 130GB of files being removed from it?

I made sure two computers were setup and working properly and filled in some data that needed to be pasted in, then he goes is all your doing is pasting what we did yesterday into the drive since we didn't have access to it because it was syncing? I say yes that's all I'm doing is filling in yesterdays data. He goes, oh ok don't worry about the last one I can do that. OK!

Not even 3 minutes later I get a call because something "didn't go the same way" I login an see he's cut and pasted the Team folder to the desktop and I'm like ... OK well now we get to re-do everything we did yesterday, what the HELL did you do? He said he was just trying to make a shortcut to the team folder...

Amazing the chaos people can cause in under 5 minutes.

 

[Diggs]

Just when you think it's idiot proof, god makes a better idiot.......

 

[Sky-Knight]

All of this is why I don't support Google and instead support M365.

I make a Team, I put files in the Team... some idiot removes them all? I can just "restore" them out of the sharepoint recycle bin and DONE.

Google Drive is a poor tool for business use, and I cannot figure out why it's so stupidly popular. Dropbox has all the same faults... They're both simply not up to the task of operating in a business setting. All of this additional billable time is simply evidence as to why.

 

[rhsiv]

All of this is why I don't support Google and instead support M365.

I make a Team, I put files in the Team... some idiot removes them all? I can just "restore" them out of the sharepoint recycle bin and DONE.

Google Drive is a poor tool for business use, and I cannot figure out why it's so stupidly popular. Dropbox has all the same faults... They're both simply not up to the task of operating in a business setting. All of this additional billable time is simply evidence as to why.

I would agree, over the last few years, M365 has taken the lead, by a lot over Google. Typically the end user can't do as much on his/her own, but it's much more business friendly. We are about to transition a very large client that's been on Google for about 10 years to M365 for just this reason. If you're able to make the choice with a client, these days, it should almost always be M365, with a few exceptions.