alexandraerin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alexandraerin) wrote2012-08-17 10:25 am
alexandraerin) wrote2012-08-17 10:25 am
Entry tags:
Drive
I'm still loving the new things Google Drive can do and the new things I've learned it can do, but I'm also learning to distrust the Google Drive local sync folder/application. It works pretty well as a dropbox for transferring files between computers but it doesn't work well as a directory to work from, because when it finds conflicts between files it seems to proliferate copies of them in arbitrary ways, and also prune them in arbitrary ways. It seems to remember that at one point I removed a folder of drafts from the drive on my desktop (I put it back) and this morning when I turned on my laptop I found it responded to that fact by removing the folder from my Google Drive folder on the laptop, even though I'd worked in and modified the files inside it since then.
Luckily I'd copied my work on the laptop last night, but it was still a little heart-stopping to turn on the desktop and see the folder gone, then go up to the laptop and find it was gone there, too.
So what I think I'm going to have to do to avoid this kind of thing is just use it a file transfer mechanism, put a zip folder in it each day with the date in the name so that there's never a conflict and so my "working copy" is never in there.
It's a little disappointing, since this makes it only marginally more convenient than other methods of file transfer... I was really enjoying being able to have a folder that would just act like a normal folder except for being in multiple computers. But losing work? I've already lost about an hour to dealing with this, making sure that everything I've added to the Drive is backed up locally on multiple computers and trying to figure out what caused it.
I'm looking at Google Drive's troubleshooting help stuff and it says that when something is deleted online it goes to the recycling bin on the local computer, and that actually does seem to be the case... there's the folder in my trash here. I just don't understand why Drive decided I'd deleted it.
Googling (heh, irony) suggests this is not an uncommon problem... some of the people complaining that Google deleted local files were people who synced their files to a new computer, left them in the Google Drive folder, and then deleted them from the online version of Google Drive without the understanding that this, too, would sync. But some of it's stuff like a sync got interrupted so only a few files downloaded, and then when the sync started again it treated the almost empty version as the definitive...
All of this is fairly consistent with my experience of Google Drive's general glitchiness, counterintuitiveness, and user-unfriendliness.
To be clear, this applies only to the offline sync folder. The Google Drive in-browser offline editor is mostly great once one gets it working...the inability to create new documents seems both random and unintended, but otherwise the program works as advertised and expected. I actually think I'm going to be investigating other dropbox-style programs (like... Dropbox). The advantages of Google Drive being tied to... Google Drive... aren't actually that important compared to its drawbacks. I use the browser app for my Google docs and the folder for things that aren't native to Google. There's no reason they couldn't be separate things.
Update: In fact, I've just installed Dropbox after seeing on their website that they recommend users move their files into Dropbox and work directly out of it... I'm not going to immediately drop the habit of backing things up locally outside of it, but this is what I'm looking for, a folder I can work in without having to think about "Okay, where is my most recent copy saved?"
Luckily I'd copied my work on the laptop last night, but it was still a little heart-stopping to turn on the desktop and see the folder gone, then go up to the laptop and find it was gone there, too.
So what I think I'm going to have to do to avoid this kind of thing is just use it a file transfer mechanism, put a zip folder in it each day with the date in the name so that there's never a conflict and so my "working copy" is never in there.
It's a little disappointing, since this makes it only marginally more convenient than other methods of file transfer... I was really enjoying being able to have a folder that would just act like a normal folder except for being in multiple computers. But losing work? I've already lost about an hour to dealing with this, making sure that everything I've added to the Drive is backed up locally on multiple computers and trying to figure out what caused it.
I'm looking at Google Drive's troubleshooting help stuff and it says that when something is deleted online it goes to the recycling bin on the local computer, and that actually does seem to be the case... there's the folder in my trash here. I just don't understand why Drive decided I'd deleted it.
Googling (heh, irony) suggests this is not an uncommon problem... some of the people complaining that Google deleted local files were people who synced their files to a new computer, left them in the Google Drive folder, and then deleted them from the online version of Google Drive without the understanding that this, too, would sync. But some of it's stuff like a sync got interrupted so only a few files downloaded, and then when the sync started again it treated the almost empty version as the definitive...
All of this is fairly consistent with my experience of Google Drive's general glitchiness, counterintuitiveness, and user-unfriendliness.
To be clear, this applies only to the offline sync folder. The Google Drive in-browser offline editor is mostly great once one gets it working...the inability to create new documents seems both random and unintended, but otherwise the program works as advertised and expected. I actually think I'm going to be investigating other dropbox-style programs (like... Dropbox). The advantages of Google Drive being tied to... Google Drive... aren't actually that important compared to its drawbacks. I use the browser app for my Google docs and the folder for things that aren't native to Google. There's no reason they couldn't be separate things.
Update: In fact, I've just installed Dropbox after seeing on their website that they recommend users move their files into Dropbox and work directly out of it... I'm not going to immediately drop the habit of backing things up locally outside of it, but this is what I'm looking for, a folder I can work in without having to think about "Okay, where is my most recent copy saved?"