Google Drive is an online storage service that I personally use for a long time, and I use both the browser version and the app version (backup and sync).
For users who subscribe to Google Workspace (paid), the “Drive File Stream” service is available, which allows you to manipulate your folders online without using up space on your PC, but for the “Backup and Sync” service used by free users, Google Drive is not available. The image is of all the folders used in Google Drive being downloaded, so it could not be used to reduce capacity.
However, in a Google Workspace blog posted on July 12, 2021, a new service called “Drive for Desktop (Google Drive for PCs)” was announced.
In this post, I will try to give you the information known at the time of posting.
Backup and sync/drive file streams will be integrated
As mentioned above, there were different synchronization solutions available for free users or Google Workspace, but these will be integrated by the time Drive for Desktop (Google Drive for PCs) appears.
This will allow free users to update their files to Google Drive without using up any space on their PC.
Before launching Drive for desktop, we had two sync solutions available: Backup and Sync, which was built primarily for consumer users, and Drive File Stream, which was built for business users. Now, we’re unifying these sync clients into the new Drive for desktop, bringing people the best and most used features from both Backup and Sync and Drive File Stream, including the ability to:
- Upload and sync photos and videos to Google Photos and/or Google Drive
- Sync external storage devices to the cloud, including flash drives and external hard drives
- Mirror Drive files on your desktop, which stores your files on your local device and enables quicker access to your content
Future Plans
As of the date of posting (2021/07/16), in the next few weeks, users who use “Backup and Sync” will receive a pop-up asking them to migrate to “Drive for Desktop (Google Drive for PC)” this time, which is recommended to be done by September 2021.
For more information about migrating from “Backup and Sync” to “Drive for Desktop (Google Drive for PCs)”, please refer to the Help Center article.
In the coming weeks, Backup and Sync users will begin to see prompts asking them to transition to Drive for desktop, which we recommend doing by September 2021. After this point, users will see an in-product notification notifying them they’ll need to transition to continue syncing their files. For additional details on the transition from Backup and Sync to Drive for desktop, please refer to this Help Center article.
You can learn more about the Drive for desktop transition for business users in this Google Workspace Updates blog post.
conclusion
This is all good news for “backup and sync” users, as it will free up 50GB of space on your computer if you are using 50GB of Google Drive.
I’ll post a verification article on this when it actually becomes available.
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I am Japanese, and my computer is set up in Japanese. So there may be some differences in the names of the buttons and windows.
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