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Beware of Google Drive and Photos!

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Nielk Mike

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After using Amazon Drive and Photos for many years, I was trying out Google Drive and Photos on my PC. Downloaded the Desktop-App and uploaded 26.000 edited JPEGs by setting the folder that contains them as a folder to be backed-up. All went well. Then I tried to create Albums from the Google Drive folder structure - and wasn't able to figure out how. Moved the folders around on the Google drive - and all of sudden noticed some action in the download window. Stopped the sync. and decided to just give up, remove the files on Google drive and remove Google Drive from my computer.

That is when I noticed that alomost all of my JPEG files in the folder that was supposed to be backed-up were gone! Gone!

Now, I have plenty of backups just in case. But how on earth can that happen? How can Google Drive access files on my computer and delete them w/o warning???? What did I do wrong?

Will stay with Amazon.
 
It sounds like you didn't configure the folder for backup, but for syncing. This isn't a Google issue. Any cloud storage would behave the same way when you set up syncing.

Syncing means that if you add a file in one location, it gets copied to all locations, but also if you delete a file from one location, it gets deleted everywhere.
 
Nielk Mike said:
....and wasn't able to figure out how. Moved the folders around on the Google drive - and all of sudden noticed some action in the download window. Stopped the sync. and decided to just give up, remove the files on Google drive and remove Google Drive from my computer.
Click to expand...
You didn't backup files but set the folder to sync..as far as I can tell...then told the app to remove the files from the folder you had synced. Then removed the app. Just a sync vs backup misunderstanding. At least you had backups...that said. You likely could have recovered them from you computer as the app probably didn't really wipe them.

I could be wrong as I stopped using the app a very long time ago
 
Mako2011 said:
Nielk Mike said:
....and wasn't able to figure out how. Moved the folders around on the Google drive - and all of sudden noticed some action in the download window. Stopped the sync. and decided to just give up, remove the files on Google drive and remove Google Drive from my computer.
Click to expand...
You didn't backup files but set the folder to sync..as far as I can tell...then told the app to remove the files from the folder you had synced. Then removed the app. Just a sync vs backup misunderstanding. At least you had backups...that said. You likely could have recovered them from you computer as the app probably didn't really wipe them.

I could be wrong as I stopped using the app a very long time ago
Click to expand...
Must have set the app to sync - though I was certain that it was set to backup.
 
Sync is not backup. I learned this the hard way, and actually lost some photos to Dropbox. They got deleted, and Dropbox dutifully deleted them from all my computers. I only learned this a few months later, when all of Dropbox's deleted files were truly gone.

Oh, and Time Machine had taken the occasion to once again corrupt its own backup and start over, thereby losing those photos as well. Time Machine is not a backup either.

I have since moved to a more robust system that never ever deletes files from my computer. And I check the system regularly by mounting and restoring some old files.
 
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I sometimes use Google Photos but I only ever use it as a cloud app.

Just drag and drop images to it, then create an album.

It works well enough if you don't need to uploads lots of images.

I do the same with Amazon Photos and OneDrive.


"It's good to be . . . . . . . . . Me!"
 
Nielk Mike said:
After using Amazon Drive and Photos for many years, I was trying out Google Drive and Photos on my PC. Downloaded the Desktop-App and uploaded 26.000 edited JPEGs by setting the folder that contains them as a folder to be backed-up. All went well. Then I tried to create Albums from the Google Drive folder structure - and wasn't able to figure out how. Moved the folders around on the Google drive - and all of sudden noticed some action in the download window. Stopped the sync. and decided to just give up, remove the files on Google drive and remove Google Drive from my computer.

That is when I noticed that alomost all of my JPEG files in the folder that was supposed to be backed-up were gone! Gone!

Now, I have plenty of backups just in case. But how on earth can that happen? How can Google Drive access files on my computer and delete them w/o warning???? What did I do wrong?

Will stay with Amazon.
Click to expand...
It's possible that during the setup of Google Drive, there was a misconfiguration that led to the files being deleted. Double-check the settings to ensure that you didn't inadvertently set up a sync action that deletes files.Some cloud storage solutions, including Google Drive, offer selective sync options. If you mistakenly selected specific folders or files not to sync, it might lead to deletion from your local computer while keeping them in the cloud.
 
Icee258 said:
It sounds like you didn't configure the folder for backup, but for syncing. This isn't a Google issue. Any cloud storage would behave the same way when you set up syncing.

Syncing means that if you add a file in one location, it gets copied to all locations, but also if you delete a file from one location, it gets deleted everywhere.
Click to expand...
I do not use Google (or any cloud backup). However there are one way and two way syncing available in software packages, and I assume on the cloud as well if you check though the options.

Two way syncing can be dangerous if you accidentally delete a file.
 
Last edited:
jxh said:
Icee258 said:
It sounds like you didn't configure the folder for backup, but for syncing. This isn't a Google issue. Any cloud storage would behave the same way when you set up syncing.

Syncing means that if you add a file in one location, it gets copied to all locations, but also if you delete a file from one location, it gets deleted everywhere.
Click to expand...
I do not use Google (or any cloud backup). However there are one way and two way syncing available in software packages, and I assume on the cloud as well if you check though the options.

Two way syncing can be dangerous if you accidentally delete a file.
Click to expand...
Even one-way syncing is dangerous.

The purpose of a backup (the intended use case here) is to have a safe repository of your files. If a mistake at the original folder deletes the file from the synched folder, that isn't a useful backup system. Two-way synching just doubles the odds of a mistake having bad consequences.
 
Icee258 said:
jxh said:
Icee258 said:
It sounds like you didn't configure the folder for backup, but for syncing. This isn't a Google issue. Any cloud storage would behave the same way when you set up syncing.

Syncing means that if you add a file in one location, it gets copied to all locations, but also if you delete a file from one location, it gets deleted everywhere.
Click to expand...
I do not use Google (or any cloud backup). However there are one way and two way syncing available in software packages, and I assume on the cloud as well if you check though the options.

Two way syncing can be dangerous if you accidentally delete a file.
Click to expand...
Even one-way syncing is dangerous.

The purpose of a backup (the intended use case here) is to have a safe repository of your files. If a mistake at the original folder deletes the file from the synched folder, that isn't a useful backup system. Two-way synching just doubles the odds of a mistake having bad consequences.
Click to expand...
Trying to figure out how Amazon Photos does the syncing. I know it doesn't delete files on my PC. What I don't know is how to exactly set the PC-App up. There are four options in case of a name conflict: Igore, Overwrite, Save With a Different Name, and always ask. For my RAW files, I have chosen "Save Under a Different Name" to on the safe side. But should I also enable "Avoid duplicats"?
 
I am not familiar with Amazon photos, unfortunately. Hopefully another forum user can help.
 
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