google drive woes

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grasshoper

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#110877 17-Oct-2012 18:49

So I have been a dropbox user for some time however recently wanted sharing options for certain folders. Dropbox allows me to either get a public link, or give full control of a folder/file to specific users. What I want to be able to do is give read permissions to just certain users, something dropbox doesnt offer.

So I decided to switch to google drive, brought a paid plan and uploaded about 15gb of data to it. All went fine until I came to installing drive on my other computers.

I already have the files on my other computers, however when configuring google drive it tells me that I have to sync google drive with an empty folder. From my understanding I have to re download 15 gb of data on every single computer I own...

Surely I am missing something here?

grant_k

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#702621 17-Oct-2012 18:55

grasshoper: I already have the files on my other computers, however when configuring google drive it tells me that I have to sync google drive with an empty folder. From my understanding I have to re download 15 gb of data on every single computer I own...

Surely I am missing something here?

No, I don't think you're missing anything. I had to do the same, although with only 1GB or so, it wasn't such a big deal.

Still a pain though, so hopefully Google can improve in this area. Having installed Google Drive on my 2 PCs, it just works without any problems, and takes care of syncing, without me having to give it a second thought.

freitasm

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#702626 17-Oct-2012 19:09

Yes, it's like that. What I'm not sure is if Google Drive behaves like Cubby and Windows Live Mesh: these programs will synchronise over the LAN if both computers are in the same network, without having to download everything from the cloud to the new computer.

Not sure if it does it now, but from what I've read it didn't at launch.

freitasm

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#702627 17-Oct-2012 19:09

Also I have a few Cubby invites - if you have 5GB or less then it's one free service to look at. From the same folks behind LogMeIn.

grant_k

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#702629 17-Oct-2012 19:14

freitasm: Yes, it's like that. What I'm not sure is if Google Drive behaves like Cubby and Windows Live Mesh: these programs will synchronise over the LAN if both computers are in the same network, without having to download everything from the cloud to the new computer.

No, there aren't any options to sync over a LAN. Everything has to go via Google's servers.

You can enable Offline Viewing for Google Docs files, but that's the only "local" function I could find, and it needs Google Gears to be installed. Most of my files aren't using Google Docs anyway, only a few, and I expect for most people, this function would be of very limited use.

grasshoper

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#702634 17-Oct-2012 19:22

Thats a real shame about google drive - Love the way it works but I really dont have the time or bandwidth to download 15gb of data to 5 different computers.

cubby looks good - but 5gb really isnt enough for me. I'll go back to dropbox which has a lan sync which I like - if I make a change on one computer it updates over lan rather then each seperately downloading it from the internet. Dropbox's program has a lot more options then google drives also. Only problem with dropbox is it cost more, but I have 20gb free from my htc one x upgrade, so I'll worry about that in a couple of years when It resets.

amanzi

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#702655 17-Oct-2012 19:54

Google Drive is certainly the cheapest option at the moment, but it is very limited in features compared to Dropbox. A big advantage of Dropbox is the client-side logic it applies before syncing files - Dropbox only uploads the bits of a file that has changed, but Google Drive will upload the whole file again even if you just make a minor change. This is also why Dropbox can sync with an existing folder - its client can compare the local and server versions and just sync the differences. There are other advantages that Dropbox has over Google Drive, e.g. LAN sync, and the ability to only sync specific folders to a new computer.

The big advantage that Cubby has over both Dropbox and Google Drive is that it can provide peer-to-peer syncing, i.e. with no cloud storage involved. This is great if you've got two computers and you want to keep two large folders in sync (e.g. your music collection). And with Cubby you can also sync other folders to the cloud just like Dropbox.