Google Drive on new PC build?

[Scam]

I'm building a shiny new PC this week and getting everything in order today. My existing games SATA drive will be going into the new build as an additional storage drive, so I'm using it to transfer a lot of my Docs, backups, games files etc.

I have about 80GB on my Google Drive so am backing it up to said SATA drive. I only have 76Mbps fibre so would like to avoid downloading that all from the cloud. Can I copy it over to a new Google Drive location on the new PC, install Google Drive and point it to that folder? What's the best way of doing this?

TIA.

 

[nade]

If you have backed up your files to Google Drive, i'm afraid I don't know of any way other than having to download them again. Unless you have a spare drive, or know any family or friends who have an external drive which you could borrow to migrate the data.

Typically I would copy across to a space internal drive or an external USB drive to then transfer to any new PC / Build.

I have not seen it in a long long time, but I do believe there is still a Google Drive for Desktop application. This would allow you to "browse" to your Google drive from Windows directly. But at the end of the day if you need the files then either they will need downloaded again or temporarily remove and add the original drive to the new machine. Then you could move the disk back to the old machine.

 

[Scam]

Unless you have a spare drive, or know any family or friends who have an external drive which you could borrow to migrate the data

No no. That’s what I’m doing. I’ve copied all the data — basically just wondering if copying that to my “new” location and then pointing a fresh install of Google Drive will work ok. And not get confused and start deleting things or something

 

[nade]

Ah ok, apologies think i'm still not quite certain exactly what you're trying to do then.

What do you mean by pointing the Google Drive to it? Google Drive will simply connect to whatever Google/gmail account you login with?

 

[Mercutio]

I believe the setup here is....

Plug in old drive, copy data over to new drive. Install google drive, point it at the new location.
Will it now want to re-sync everything or will it see the files are the same?



Assuming that's correct, I wouldn't know for sure, but I'd bet google will spot it. Unless you pay a LOT for google drive (never looked), it's just a few ££ on data storage their end rather than storage + bandwidth (£££) costs if they make their product a bit smarter.

 

[Mujja]

I've saved the Google drive folder "DriveFS" and content on a second disk. When I reinstall the app I point it to that location and it doesn't need to re-download all the files again.

Backup your DriveFS folder is and restore the folder and all your files to the original location and the app won't need to re-download everything again.

I've used this method now for a few years and multiple OS reinstalls.

edit: I've checked the contents of DriveFS and it's just dozens of empty folders with 0 bytes. It's been a while but I seem to remember without that folder GDrive would download all the files again replacing the local files.