Google Drive is a mess. It frequently fails to process data and to propagate changes across.
Whenever I tried to use it I got burned.
It's been 191 days since Google Drive worked for me
221–230 of 238 posts
Re: It's been 191 days since Google Drive worked for me
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
S3 is expensive per byte, and your use of "that scale" confuses me for an amount that's only about 15% of a new hard drive.
I was more thinking about the quantity of files
Save some web pages and install some portable programs into the folders you want backed up and the number of files adds up fast.
Re: It's been 191 days since Google Drive worked for me
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've found Google Fi to have exceptionally good support, and the same is true with Nexus phones - a very painless RMA process when something didn't work quite right.
I call that the Google myopia. the new users of a new, sexy product, usually free, are always in awe because they really go the extra mile and have the best team working on it. that's when everyone else is looking from far away and they see that everything is perfect. then the team gets promoted, leaves, etc. and what's left is the real Google consumer product. and that is the crap they everyone sees up close. and ev…
Yeah, that might be the case with fi, and it is sort of the natural way of things. I don't remember any older Google products having ever had a good support system, though.
Re: It's been 191 days since Google Drive worked for me
#224Ridiculous that they imply throughout that they have a (mysteriously silent) Level 3 support or engineering team working on the issue for almost that entire time. Would be amazing if that's actually true and it turns out they discovered some huge underlying issue with the system from the user logs that they've actually had a team working on... but I'm sure it isn't. For a start if an issue like that was being worked…
I am on that team =). I won't say much publicly, but if this is the issue I think it is (customer has a huge number of files, and is trying to sync it with a 32-bit client, and hitting memory issues), we are aware of the issue, and are definitely working on it. It's a tricky thing to solve in any sync client - for example, Dropbox has a cap around 300,000 files (I believe this customer had 700,000 files?): > https://…
A 32-bit client can only handle 300,000 files? Could you imagine if 32-bit windows fell over at that level. Is it storing every file in RAM?
Re: It's been 191 days since Google Drive worked for me
#225Google periodically flirts with the idea of being a consumer products company that provides products to consumers and then supports them. There is extensive evidence (of which this is just the latest element) that this is not a good idea, and won't be until there's a fundamental change.
I've found Google Fi to have exceptionally good support, and the same is true with Nexus phones - a very painless RMA process when something didn't work quite right.
Occasionally someone has a good experience with Google support, usually but not always involving one of their latest products when it's still a big corporate focus.
But so far, those good experiences always seem to be rare exceptions. The median customer service experience with google seems to be extremely negative.
If google collected (I don't think they do?) and then published NPS scores for their major customer-facing products, would any of them have positive scores? :)
Re: It's been 191 days since Google Drive worked for me
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am on that team =). I won't say much publicly, but if this is the issue I think it is (customer has a huge number of files, and is trying to sync it with a 32-bit client, and hitting memory issues), we are aware of the issue, and are definitely working on it. It's a tricky thing to solve in any sync client - for example, Dropbox has a cap around 300,000 files (I believe this customer had 700,000 files?): > https://…
> we are aware of the issue, and are definitely working on it. I am guessing the fix for this issue would be to download the new Google Backup & Sync app [1][2] that replaces the current Google Drive client and is meant to be released on Wednesday [3]? :) [1] https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2017/06/backup-and-sync... [2] http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/07/01/googles-updated-driv... [3] https://gsuite.google.co…
Correct =), there are many improvements in the new client (landing soon), and there are further ones coming in the pipeline shortly after.
Re: It's been 191 days since Google Drive worked for me
#227I am having issue with my google drive as well, they calculated the wrong storage usage and I simply cannot upload more files. I spent weeks to convince the support it is their bug that clearing cache is not solving the problem. They said they're going to follow up but nothing happened. I then just cancelled the plan, now gmail is complaining not enough space and will stop receiving email. I told the support my situa…
Are you able to provide more details here?
Or you can reach out to me (details in profile).
(Disclaimer: I work for Google, but comments here are my own).
Re: It's been 191 days since Google Drive worked for me
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you read above - Dropbox does exactly that... > https://www.dropbox.com/help/space/file-storage-limit They claim a limit of around 300,000 files - this user apparently has 700,000 files. The Google sync client doesn't have a hard limit per se, but yes, the performance does similarly decline after a certain point - it depends on a number of factors, but it's possibly at 700,000 that you would see issues. It should…
That seems like a ridiculously small number of files at which to start encountering problems. I would expect Google to make things more scalable. Yes I realize you have to work with what the OS gives you, but still, you can build your own stuff on top of that, no?
Keep in mind this is a 32-bit system.
As a result it has at most 3.5 gigs of memory for the entire system, and e.g. on windows this will limit a single process to 2 gigs. If the sync client keeps some kind of in-memory representation of your files (a very reasonable thing to do for the vast majority of clients), and if you have 700,000 files, and assuming that folder references magically take up no space and that the sync client uses no other memory whatsoever, that's less than 3k per file representation before you crash.
If that is indeed contributing to the problem, it's most likely just a case of doing what's optimal for normal workloads, and simply not having engineered a backup solution for cases which fall so far outside of your expected usage that it didn't seem worth considering at the onset. This kind of change would also be very non-trivial to engineer, likely requiring a rather large amount of refactoring.
Re: It's been 191 days since Google Drive worked for me
#229Two things i do not get: - Why can't Google figure out what the conditions which trigger this issue are and add a caveat to the documentation? "Bad things will happen if you use more than 500,000 files on a 32 bit client." This would save both their support organization and their customers a lot of pain. - Why does this particular user not give up on Google Drive if it does not work for him, or at least try to figure…
> Why can't Google figure out what the conditions which trigger this issue are and add a caveat to the documentation? You can't fix software breakage by adding mentions in random documentation pages. Bad things shouldn't happen if you have more than 500,000 files. And if such things are unavoidable due to limits that are out of Google's control, like from the operating system or the CPU architecture, then the softwar…
> Bad things shouldn't happen if you have more than 500,000 files.
No one in the world has a solution which works for this case. I think the best thing for Google to do here is to document it like dropbox and get out of the blame game.
Re: It's been 191 days since Google Drive worked for me
#230I am having issue with my google drive as well, they calculated the wrong storage usage and I simply cannot upload more files. I spent weeks to convince the support it is their bug that clearing cache is not solving the problem. They said they're going to follow up but nothing happened. I then just cancelled the plan, now gmail is complaining not enough space and will stop receiving email. I told the support my situa…
Are you able to provide more details here? Or you can reach out to me (details in profile). (Disclaimer: I work for Google, but comments here are my own).
> details in profile
I don't know if you've removed them since posting this, but your contact details aren't actually in your profile.