My various Google Drive issues are still not resolved. I'm posting 
mostly for general edification. If anyone has any thoughts, of course, 
feel free to share.


Last time I posted on this subject, I told you all that Google Drive 
wasn't syncing and that it never stopped syncing and or loading information.


I resolved the syncing problem by reinstalling Backup and Sync and 
making sure I went through the entire partially accessible setup wizard.


I haven't resolved the issue of too much stuff loading. At one point 
during set up, I know I had the option to sync or not sync the Documents 
folder. When I tried to find that option during subsequent 
installations/setups, I couldn't, and when I tried going into Drive 
settings, I couldn't find it either. However, when I got into some 
options via the system tray icon, I discovered that Drive was indeed 
trying to copy everything from Documents, which includes Audible books 
and BARD books, into my Google Drive cloud storage. This explains both 
why my cloud storage was full and why syncing never stopped (I have lots 
of audio books, and they're big).


So feeling smug, I went into Drive on the web to mess with settings and 
to remove the audio books. I discovered several things. First, while the 
endless syncing is in progress, the Google web interface is very hard to 
navigate. The page is slow, and many form controls appeared to be 
unlabeled. Much later, when I made the syncing stop, the page was way 
more accessible. Second, some of the controls mentioned in articles and 
tutorials didn't seem to be anywhere. For example, there's supposed to 
be a cloud icon that shows you what's been uploaded. I never found that. 
Third, on the web UI, I could only access the files that were in my 
Google Drive folder. I could not find the audio books and other folders 
from my Documents. I knew they had to be somewhere. My Google Drive 
folder said I had 2.3 GB worth of files. The web interface, which was 
forever trying to finish syncing, said I had 14.6 GB worth of files and 
counting. Fourth, the contents of my Google Drive folder had 
mysteriously and tantalizingly tripled. I have roughly the same files in 
my Dropbox and Google Drive folders. Dropbox showed slightly under 800 
MB, and Google Drive had 2.3 GB. At one point while scrabbling around 
the Google Drive web UI, I found that I had three copies of everything, 
which explain the folder sizes, but when I tried to delete the extra 
files, I somehow lost the screen, and when it came back, I only had one 
copy of each file though the folder sizes remained unchanged.


What I did eventually was uninstall Google Drive from all my machines, 
then go into the web interface to manually delete all my files. None of 
the extra stuff showed up (e.g., none of the audio books and none of the 
triplicate files), but the next day, I was only using a small amount of 
my cloud storage.


If anyone has thoughts about what went wrong or tips about how to 
improve the experience, I'm happy to hear them.

P.S. Yes, I've reported this information.

On 1/18/2020 1:19 PM, Ana G wrote:
> 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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