Apr 24, 2019
I want to move everything from my google drive to an external hard drive.
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Last edited Jul 20, 2019
Jun 27, 2024
Diamond Product Expert PeteranDi recommended this
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All Replies (22)
Apr 24, 2019
Hi Earl Williams 4593!
Just to clarify, what you are asking is how to remove all the data from your Google Drive cloud storage area and store it instead in that external drive. Once you do that, you will no longer be using any sync via Backup & Sync since it syncs to/from your Google Drive cloud. Is that correct?
Assuming it is, then first you should reconfigure Backup & Sync to no longer monitor any of that data. If this will be stopping syncing of all data you can therefore uninstall the app.
Once you are certain that Backup & Sync is no longer monitoring any of the data, what you would do next to "move the data" will depend on how you have been using your Google Drive. Probably the easiest way to obtain all the data stored in your cloud would be to use Google's Takeout service:
Once you have downloaded the data, you would extract it and move it onto that external drive. Only after ensuring that all the data you wanted on that external drive is properly there would you then remove data from your Google Drive cloud storage area.
The nice thing about Takeout is that you produce archives that contain data you have selected from your cloud. You can select not only data files, but also emails, contacts and other things contained within your cloud. Once you have downloaded an archive, you can extract it and upload to your other account.
It also does not delete the original data when producing the archives, so you can and should make some small tests to see exactly how things work.
Note: If the data is going to be deleted from the original account, always crosscheck your data once you have it into your other account. This will ensure that you haven't forgotten something or had any transfer problems before the original data is gone for forever.
Once you have downloaded the data, you would extract it and move it onto that external drive. Only after ensuring that all the data you wanted on that external drive is properly there would you then remove data from your Google Drive cloud storage area.
Looking forward to seeing your replies!
Sep 19, 2019
Oct 13, 2019
Oct 19, 2019
Oct 31, 2019
Chrome for example,
1) Click the three vertical dots icon, it will open a drop-down menu. This button is located next to the address bar in the upper-right corner of your browser screen.
2) Click Settings on the menu.
3) Scroll down and click Advanced, it will expand the Settings menu and show your advanced options.
4) Scroll down to the Downloads section on the menu.
5) Click the CHANGE button or Switch.
1) Click the three vertical dots icon, it will open a drop-down menu. This button is located next to the address bar in the upper-right corner of your browser screen.
2) Click Settings on the menu.
3) Scroll down and click Advanced, it will expand the Settings menu and show your advanced options.
4) Scroll down to the Downloads section on the menu.
5) Click the CHANGE button or Switch.
I changed it to my external drive. Now...I go back to my google drive and I see the files I want to move off my drive to my external drive. Is it possible to dowload them all at one time? Drop and Drag doesnt seem to be an option you can do from google drive to an external drive.
Google user
Oct 31, 2019
Hello, Robby Crowley
I noticed you tried what I explained.
It is possible to download them all at one time if you click "Download" in the menu after choosing multiple files by clicking with Ctrl or Shift key. You cannot use Drag & Drop for downloading.
In case of multiple files, Google Drive will download them to your local drive after zipping to one or a few zip files, so you need to unzip it.
Jan 9, 2020
There are applications for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS for verifying checksums on local files, but you need to have a copy of the hash where the file originates from (Google cloud) to know for certain that it matches. By the way this should also happen when the data is uploaded to Google drive, the fact that is doesn't is disconcerting at best. Who cares if it's free? They are trying to give us a sample of something we will try and purchase in proper quantity if we like it. Why would I pay $60 a year for data transfer with no hash verification? It's January 2020, not 1995.
I'm a 50 year old fart who didn't get my first computer until my early to mid 30s. Google should just be offering this without suggestion. I can't tell you how many times I have opened a video or audio file, only to find gibberish, because it lost integrity during the transfer. A video that says it's 43 minutes long with a bitrate of 20 Mbps will in fact be 3 minutes long and just suddenly stop at minute 3, in spite of the file saying it's size is almost identical to the size of the original file, the variance can be as small as 12 or 13 bytes or 30 kilobytes depending on the transfer. Or a photo simply won't render when you click on it and the default image viewer launches. Recently this happens to me when a single USB 3.0 cable on a USB 3.0 hub has a defect on the micro B plug that plugs into a single external USB 8 Tb hard drive on a hub that connects up to 16 external USB drives. Just a single defective micro B plug can cause data transfers to every hard drive on the hub to lose integrity and miss several bytes of data during the transfer, rendering them useless, regardless of file type. I find this happens when I buy the 6 foot USB cables because they allow me to place them further from the desktop computer that sits on a shelf under my desk, and are forced to rest several feet away on another table since my desktop is full. Unfortunately the 6 ft USB cables require so much plastic shielding, the sheer weight of the cables causes them to bend the micro B side plug of the USB 3.0 cables, I have not experienced this issue with the USB 2.0 cables, or the 3ft USB 3.0 cables that come with the hard drives when you purchase them in the box, which are several ounces lighter. The design of the thin flat aluminum male micro B plug on the USB 3.0 cable is so thin and flat, just the weight of the 6 foot cables has caused this malfunction on 4 of the 12 USB 3.0 hard drives that I have plugged into USB 3.0 hubs. Without fail, EVERY single time this happened, the Terabytes of data that I download every week, at the hour that the 6 foot cable lost contact with it's hard drive on the micro B flexible aluminum end ( the end that plugs into the external USB hard drive itself), data transmitting to any of the other hard drives attached on the same 3.0 USB hub lost integrity and had to be downloaded again. If you search, there are apps for doing hash checks on files that you transfer locally from one hard drive or one folder to another, but I don't know how one would do that from a cloud like Google drive unless there was an app on the drive itself that could make hashes. I found one (an app, utility app) on Google drive that can make hashes, but it doesn't work with any of the downloading tools, so you would have to paste out all of those hash files, then run checksums on them again locally, a very lengthy and slow process compared to a download tool that does it during the download process as a final part of the data transfer like a p2p client, usenet binary news reader, download manager, or Windows app Tera Copy I use to verify data integrity of files I move locally. I like the way Tera Copy does it best, after it moves a file from point A to point B, it compares the CRC32 of both files, and if it matches it tells you the file move or copy was successful. If one or more file in the transfer doesn't match, it warns you and gives you the option to overwrite the bad file again, and then verifies it/them again, and informs you when you have results of matching CRC32 of every file in the archive, folder, and transfer.
It really frustrates me how slow and inefficient the process of zipping files and downloading them from Google drive is. If you don't wish to zip files into zip archives, it will even presume to reformat them into other file types, whether the document is even compatible with that other file type or not!! Ugh!
Jan 12, 2020
The first suggestion, from the Canadian, encourages the user to "Take Out' or Delete files to free up storage.
I just want to free up space so I can synchronize with my other computer, not lose forever the files in Google drive.
Jan 31, 2020
Feb 4, 2020
Is there a way for me to set the default sync location to an external hard drive? I don't want to delete anything from Google Drive, so Takeout doesn't seem like the right option, I just want my Google Drive to sync things onto my external instead of my computer. And it's not downloads I'm trying to control as much as it is the automatic sync.
Thanks
Feb 4, 2020
Google user
Feb 5, 2020
@Kelsey Holstrom @Dan Ross
Backup & Sync has 2 sync ways, which are "Google Drive (My Drive)" and "My Computer" (or My Laptop etc.). They and their options are completely separated.
▼My Computer
You can specify any folder located anywhere on your computer to sync with the cloud.
B&S create a My Computer folder in https://drive.google.com/drive/computers, then copy the specified folder to there. After that, B&S continue to keep the sync between the cloud and local.
▼ Google Drive (My Drive)
If enabled this, B&S create a Google Drive folder on your computer, then copy the contents of My Drive of the cloud to there. After that, B&S continue to keep the sync between Google Drive folder on your computer and My Drive located https://drive.google.com/drive/my-drive.
You can specify the location of Google Drive folder to anywhere on your PC.
When B&S is keeping the sync, you should quit B&S from the menu by clicking the icon. Then move the Google Drive folder on your computer to another location. Next time when B&S will start up, The app will not find the Google Drive folder and will ask you to disconnect or search for the folder. So, you can click the "search" and reconnect the Google Drive folder at the new location.
If you have already disconnected the sync of Google Drive folder, you can click the "Change" button to choose the folder located anywhere when you set up the sync again.
Jun 27, 2024
Diamond Product Expert PeteranDi recommended this