Does moving files delete and reupload them?

I had a fully synced local copy of my Google Drive and wanted to rearranged some of the folders. Upon doing so it appears the folder I moved was deleted from Google Drive and now Odrive wants to reupload it.

Is it the case that any file move within a service will be handled by ODrive as deleting the file and re-uploading it?

Hi @joerivera,
odrive does its best to perform moves, but it possible that moves can be picked-up as add+delete rather than a move.

The reason for this is that odrive has to try to optimize for moves when it sees that a file or folder has disappeared from one local area and been added to another local area. Sometimes it cannot make the connection for the move optimization. This can rely on several factors, so it is hard to nail down. In the cases where it cannot “see” the move, it treats the move as a delete in one area and an add to another area.

If you are planning to rearrange several folders, it can be beneficial to do it from the Google Drive web client, since the moves are explicit and not interpreted, like they are on the local file system.

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I’ve seen the same behaviour with OneDrive: move = copy + delete

If odrive is busy syncing other things it can contribute to it missing the move optimizations, as well.

Generally it is best to try any largeer reorganization while odrive is otherwise idle to ensure that it can reconcile and correlate the changes quickly.

I found the safest way to move files or folders is to put oDrive in the no sync setting, then use Google Dive website to make the move and also manually move the local copy, and turn syncing back on. I have moved folders with 1-2TB of files and many 2GB files without any problem.

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Great suggestion @bwhitney!