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Introducing Backup and Sync for Google Photos and Google Drive

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Re: Introducing Backup and Sync for Google Photos and Google Drive

#4

Can someone explain what this adds over Google Drive? More importantly, is it taking anything away? The blog post sure didn't provide that necessary info.

Looks like this allows you to select folders outside of the Google Drive folder to sync into the cloud without moving then into the Drive folder.

Re: Introducing Backup and Sync for Google Photos and Google Drive

#5

Can someone explain what this adds over Google Drive? More importantly, is it taking anything away? The blog post sure didn't provide that necessary info.

If it's backup, it should not work the same way: deletions should not be synced for example.

Re: Introducing Backup and Sync for Google Photos and Google Drive

#6
This is so confusing. What's that? A replacement, an addition? Will this clutter up my photos? It's like an invitation to: Try it out to find out what it really does and if it clutters up your photo stream... deal with it.

Update: oh the blog actually writes it is an replacement. Great... now I don't know if this works in any way with Insync in parallel :(

Re: Introducing Backup and Sync for Google Photos and Google Drive

#7

Can someone explain what this adds over Google Drive? More importantly, is it taking anything away? The blog post sure didn't provide that necessary info.

I was a little confused at first. As the announcement says, this is a complete replacement for the existing Drive app. No idea why they thought it was a good idea to rename it (and to use the same name for a separate application for Photos...).

I ran the install, and it appears that the main difference (other than UI) is that you can easily add other folders from your computer to your Drive now.

Re: Introducing Backup and Sync for Google Photos and Google Drive

#8

This is so confusing. What's that? A replacement, an addition? Will this clutter up my photos? It's like an invitation to: Try it out to find out what it really does and if it clutters up your photo stream... deal with it. Update: oh the blog actually writes it is an replacement. Great... now I don't know if this works in any way with Insync in parallel :(

That happened to me the first time I checked the option to sync my Drive photos to Google Photos a couple of years ago. I had random work and school related graphics and photos jammed into my Photos library for a looooong time (and there was no "undo").

Re: Introducing Backup and Sync for Google Photos and Google Drive

#9
What surprises me most is the fact that there seems to be very little interest in meta syncing. I have far more files to store than there is capacity on my SSD, and yet, most of the cloud storage providers seem to offer only full or selective sync capabilities.

What I would like to have is the ability to browse my entire file repository and "pin" certain files to make sure I can have the most critical stuff offline, while other files would be streamed when I need them.

I kind of hoped that SpaceMonkey (now Vivint Smart Drive) would be the answer for me and have one sitting right here. It's a a pretty cool device in theory, but in practice, it is extremely slow, backed by a company that could not care less about the product it has acquired.

Then there is Dropbox Smart Sync. This seems promising, but only is available for business users. I don't have any experiences with it.

Still looking for one single product to this right. Am I the only one frustrated with this?

Re: Introducing Backup and Sync for Google Photos and Google Drive

#10
I dont get what's new here or am i confused?

I have used many services over the years, OneDrive from Microsoft, Google Drive / Photo sync thing, dropbox, Amazon storage, etc.

Honestly being that I work at Microsoft I am obviously going to have a bias a bit, but this stuff is not about my work its about my life and how to stay synced across my Windows Phone, Windows 10 devices (i have a few), my iPhone, my iPad, etc. and the best way i have found to do all of that is with OneDrive.

Hold on, i know what you're thinking that im just picking my companies product, but honestly i tried them all, a lot over the years and OneDrive just does a great job, has first class apps for iOS, Android, Windows and powerful Web UI for when i just need to jump in and find something.

Also you get 5 gigs for free with OneDrive. Move up to 50GB and its $1.99/mo.

On top of that I use an Office 365 subscription for my personal life (custom domain/email) and again i get a ton more storage through that.

Really worth giving it a try!

https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-us/plans/

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