If you use Google Drive, please share your thoughts

Software
1

I have been using iCloud Drive for a few years now. It’s mostly works until it doesn’t. Recently, an entire folder disappeared. Thankfully, I was able to restore from backup.

Honestly, it’s time to move on and I am thinking of moving to Google Drive.

If you have been using google drive for some time, please share your experiences. Should I move to Google drive ?

Why google drive: well, I already pay for Google One and I was not keen to have another subscription.

2

When you are having problems, do you try using a web browser to sign in and look at https://icloud.com? Especially for something like a missing folder, I would want to check the web site before I tried to restore it.

Another thing to try with a missing folder is to type “killall bird” at a terminal prompt and restart your Mac. (Othere have mentioned this for iCloud problems.)

3

I have tried them both. After searching through these forums, that was what I discovered.

That folder was missing from all my devices including iCloud Drive on the web.

I did not take the decision to move away from iCloud Drive lightly. Everything happens behind the scenes with iCloud Drive and it’s pretty much impossible to troubleshoot etc

4

I have used Google drives for almost 10 years and have not experienced folder disappeared. May I know how do you access / use the drive? Browser, app?

Have you tried search for it ? Are the folders that disappeared created by yourself or shared by others?

I cannot say I am an expert but if you share more details I may be able to help

5

The folder disappeared in iCloud Drive. Basically, I have lost trust in iCloud Drive and therefore want to try google drive.

I gather you have positive feedback on google drive ?

6

I’ve been using Gmail for nearly 20 years, and Google Workspace (and it’s predecessors) for nearly that long. I can’t recall ever losing any messages or files, so if I have had any problems they must not have been significant.

Today I mainly use an iPad Pro with GD and sync my files to my Mac using Google Drive for Desktop so they can be backed up. Sync is fast and almost immediate.

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7

sorry, I read the op wrongly, I thought you lost the folder in Google drive

Yes, I use Google drive regularly and never has any issue

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8

I have used the official Google Drive app but ran into a couple of issues.

  • Ram usage was high. My workaround was to run google drive to sync/download a local copy and then quit the app.
  • A collaborator could copy and paste a file with the same name which was acceptable in google drive. But when the app downloaded the second copy, I would get multiple versions of those two files. From what I could tell, it was because the owner was different in google drive but on the mac, it would append numbers to differentiate them.
  • I prefer to have a local copy of the files and I ran into issues when Apple updated the File Provider API
  • Google drive doesn’t work well if you use aliases

Instead of the official app and depending on your use case, you could look into mounting google drive virtually:

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