Hi All,


I'm curious to know what experiences others here have had with Google 
Backup and Sync (formerly Google Drive). Mine is doing weird things, and 
I'm not sure what's happening.


I think my two basic questions are these:


* Does Google Drive sync as it should for you? In other words, do the 
right things appear and disappear across devices as you add or delete them.


* Do you have the right number of files and folders in Google Drive?


I have three devices: my desktop, my laptop, and my smart phone. I have 
Dropbox and Google Drive installed on all of them. Whenever I work on 
anything important, I copy it into both Dropbox and Google Drive. Over 
the years, I've noticed that Dropbox always sincs as expected and that 
Google Drive syncs intermittently, but because I'm usually in the middle 
of doing something urgent when I notice this, I forget to check into it 
later.


Lately I've been working with two laptops (i.e., the new one, which has 
been buggy, and the old one, which is what I go back to when the new one 
is acting up). Because the free version of Dropbox can be used only on 
three devices now, I've been paying a lot more attention to Google Drive.


The first thing I noticed is that things are mostly not syncing. The 
majority of the content that appeared on the new laptop is from about 
five years ago though there is the random newer file or folder.


The second thing I noticed is that my phone seems to show two distinct 
backups. One is from "today," and the other is from two or three years 
ago. I removed the older one, but I'm a little confused about why 
they're both there. While I was at it, I went into Drive on the web 
(using my desktop if that matters) to remove some old teaching folders 
with student work and a few more unrelated files.


The third thing I noticed happened the next day. Since the culprit 
seemed to be my desktop, I read and followed some troubleshooting 
information on Backup and Sync. Then I went into the system tray with 
Windows+b to check for a status icon. It said I was syncing and was at 
"117 out of 8216" (good) though I'm not sure whether that refers to 
things like files or bytes as neither makes sense. I did something else 
for half an hour, and when I checked again, I was only at "472 out of 
8216." Eight hours later, I'm at "5179 out of 8216." I don't have a 
powerhouse computer, but there really is no reason for syncing to take 
this long. When I go into the Drive folder on the desktop, I notice all 
the teaching folders are there (so not deleted from the web).


I'm wondering how well this will work going forward, and I'm wondering 
what exactly is syncing.


Other experiences?


Ciao


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