[psychomansam]

Question 1:

A recent post by slackers had prompted me to get better at backing up my uni stuff. I've installed googledrive and have the folder on my desktop. I've copied a couple of gigs into it. I was wonderfing if it is safe to delete the original versions from my desktop? Will the gdrive folder keep a physical copy on my harddrive as well as in the cloud?

FYI: I use dropbox on my iPad, which kids use, so I'm using googledrive for this so that kids can't delete shit via my iPad! This laptop is the only device I have gdrive installed on.

Question 2:

I have 3 pdfs with file names too long. They can't be moved or renamed. WTF!

[remus]

In reply to 1), yep, a physical copy will stay on your machine. Having said that, be aware that if you delete the file from any google drive folder it will disappear from all your google drive folders. In other words it is a good backup against your hard drive failing but if you delete it and clear your trash it will be gone for good.

[slackline]

Can't help with 1 as I don't use Google Drive, sorry.

Question 2:

I have 3 pdfs with file names too long. They can't be moved or renamed. WTF!

Probably down to the filesystem being used.  Its not clear to me which computer you're referring to here so here are the limits for most of them.

Solution....find where you got them from (guessing somewhere off of the net) and download them again, but give them shorter file names.

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

Be wary of deleting the original. In my desktop GDrive folder quite a few files exist only as shortcuts. Not sure why some are like that and some not.

Tried to create a PDF with a very long file name but it wouldn't let me. Can you download the version and resave it with a shorter name?

[Wil]

I use it for all of my lesson plans, presentations etc. Works really well and is easy to access without having to mess about with pen drives and duplicating documents.

As said, the folder on your computer will be saved on our PC, and the only danger is if you start deleting things they get removed everywhere. The auto-backup seems a little bit irrational at times, and you can't force it to sync immediately as far as I can tell.

I do back it up on a pen drive every couple of weeks just in case.

[Paul B]

Be wary of deleting the original. In my desktop GDrive folder quite a few files exist only as shortcuts. Not sure why some are like that and some not.

So is it backing up files outside of the GDrive folder  to GDrive using a shortcut? I ask as I want to start using it (more) to backup things that I don't really wan't to move (read can't) to inside of the folder itself.

[rodma]

Can't help with 1 as I don't use Google Drive, sorry.

Question 2:

I have 3 pdfs with file names too long. They can't be moved or renamed. WTF!

Probably down to the filesystem being used.  Its not clear to me which computer you're referring to here so here are the limits for most of them.

Solution....find where you got them from (guessing somewhere off of the net) and download them again, but give them shorter file names.

we had a similar problem at work, due to total pathway name (or whatever it is actually called) being too long, had no way of coming by the files again, so shortened the pathway to the files (renaming "my documents" "md" etc. until it was short enough) and then renamed them and moved them somewhere sensible.

[Paul B]

So is it backing up files outside of the GDrive folder  to GDrive using a shortcut? I ask as I want to start using it (more) to backup things that I don't really wan't to move (read can't) to inside of the folder itself.

Looks like the above isn't possible which is a bit  given both skydrive and dropbox support it.

Be wary of deleting the original. In my desktop GDrive folder quite a few files exist only as shortcuts. Not sure why some are like that and some not.

Can someone explain this to me please? I read this and it seemed like a careless slip (ok he did press "Delete Forever") and you can lose your data. I use Drive, Dropbox etc. as a backup solution of sorts and don't want to get it wrong.

[tomtom]

Yeah - I've skydrive on my machines (quite impressed tbh - was a bit creaky at first but now very good) and been tryign to set up GDrive to work in the same way on MrsTT's machine - but to no avail...

[mr__j5]

Can someone explain this to me please? I read this and it seemed like a careless slip (ok he did press "Delete Forever") and you can lose your data. I use Drive, Dropbox etc. as a backup solution of sorts and don't want to get it wrong.

I don't use the PC client of Google Drive either, so I have any experience but he seemed to gloss over the most surprising thing to me.

That is, he said that by copying the files out of the google drive folder, onto his PC it didn't actually make a copy of them, as if there wasn't really a local copy of the file in the Google Drive in the first place.

That would be a very large difference between Google Drive and all of the other solutions and not really what most people would want.

[psychomansam]

Can someone explain this to me please? I read this and it seemed like a careless slip (ok he did press "Delete Forever") and you can lose your data. I use Drive, Dropbox etc. as a backup solution of sorts and don't want to get it wrong.

I don't use the PC client of Google Drive either, so I have any experience but he seemed to gloss over the most surprising thing to me.

That is, he said that by copying the files out of the google drive folder, onto his PC it didn't actually make a copy of them, as if there wasn't really a local copy of the file in the Google Drive in the first place.

That would be a very large difference between Google Drive and all of the other solutions and not really what most people would want.

I don't think that was the case at all. It seemed to me that there was a local hardcopy and it did also create another copy when he requested it. The only exception to this was his googledocs which are a totally different beast explicitly created so as to only exist in the cloud. Frankly, an IT professional should get that!
To me, this means it works just like everything else except for in the case of googledocs which you can take or leave. I can understand feeling worried about them, but I doubt google is lacking in backups. Still wouldn't use them myself, partly because I already switch between 2 versions of microsoft and open office and don't want more compatibility issues!

[mr__j5]

"Unfortunately, on trying to open them I’ve discovered that these files don’t contain any actual data. They’re merely links to cloud-based originals"


I don't see how else you'd get this situation, if you copied the files from the Google Drive folder to your PC. Deleted the contents of the Google Drive folder and then copied the files back again.

[tomtom]

Still wouldn't use them myself, partly because I already switch between 2 versions of microsoft and open office and don't want more compatibility issues!

Not especially relevant but one of the neat things of google docs and skydrive (I use both) is the online docs thing.. google docs work really well, but if you have skydrive you can edit your docs using the online (on browser) version of Office...

Google docs is great when you have multiple people working on one doc simultaneously.. Now if I'm running a workshop/brainstorming thingy, instead of having a note-taker, someone just types away on a google doc (projected onto the big screen) and others in the workshop can add/edit as they like there and then....

[slackline]

Google docs is great when you have multiple people working on one doc simultaneously.. Now if I'm running a workshop/brainstorming thingy, instead of having a note-taker, someone just types away on a google doc (projected onto the big screen) and others in the workshop can add/edit as they like there and then....

  Just wish there wasn't such resistance to it where I work.  Why people bother writing a Word doc, attaching it to an email then sending it round to a mailing list is beyond me, especially when my employers pay for staff & students to use Google services. 

As for the tool who messed up his syncing, well its a perfectly sane way for syncing to occur, it just didn't fit with his prior expectation of how it should work.

My conjecture would be that his problems started when he installed the service on three computers simultaneously they all started syncing to the cloud at the same time, and oh wait hang on there is already a file that exists with that name, I'll just rename it so we don't over-write anything important.

Would likely have avoided this by syncing one computer, then adding the others after it had synced to the cloud, as it would then have said "Oh look based on the checksum we've already got that file here in the cloud.".  It wouldn't have been able to compare checksums if uploads were in progress.

He also didn't take the time to understand this message, which is very, very clear...



Yes they might just be links on your hard drive, but he was being told in no unequivocal terms that he would be deleting the files and not the links.

Even if he was confused by the wording the fact that it clearly states "You can't undo this action" and the button reads "Delete Forever" should have triggered some huge alarm bells that what he thought was going to happen was wrong.