New Google Backup and Sync and odrive root to different folders

Google recently changed their Windows desktop sync applet to Google Backup and Sync. The new app has the option to not use Google Drive and use Backup and Sync instead. Backup and Sync has more options to what is synced.

I moved all my Drive contents to the new Computers folder using drag/drop on the Drive webpage. Now everything I moved is inaccessible to odrive folder and webpage.

I could move everything back so odrive will work, but prefer the new G drive features.

How can odrive be fixed?

Also related, I have a business G acct and got notice that yet another sync applet will be offered to business accounts. This could be yet another bug.

Hi @michael3,
Can you provide a few more details on the actions and what you are seeing? I don’t quite understand.

When you go to the Google Drive web client (https://drive.google.com/drive) do you see your files?

Below are screenshots of what I see in all the odrive and Gdrive realms. Let me know if you need more. Sorry no annotations. Difficult to do in HTML on this interface.

Hi @michael3,
Thanks for taking the time to take all of these screenshots.

I understand now. The new “Backup and Sync” feature that Google has introduced seems to store the data in a location that is not listed under the normal Google Drive hierarchy. This folder is not discoverable via the Google Drive APIs yet, so odrive doesn’t have a way to see it.

hi. more than a year since the last reply. any change in google api or anything to locate the computer folders in google drive and sync?

Hi @Javadsha_Varaiya,
Unfortunately Google hasn’t yet provided a way to obtain the folder IDs for these folders via their API, so we have no way of listing them.

New oDrive user, wondering if this feature has been added as my google drive is setup in a similar way currently. Otherwise, i will need to relocate all of my user folders to the main google drive folder.

Update: With support for Google’s new “shortcuts”, odrive can gain access to the “Computers” folders by creating shortcuts from the “Computers” folders to your main Google Drive.

Old reply:


Hi @jtrudel246,
Unfortunately Google still doesn’t seem to have provided an API method for discovering the folders that exist outside of the main Google Drive folder or Team Drives.

If anyone knows otherwise, or comes across an addition to the API that allows this, please let me know.

Thanks for the quick reply. Do you have any ideas alternatively to keeping my windows users folders backed up without having to remap them? So far i have the software set up and my google drive synced, not including my windows folders which i also map as a sort of backup solution to google drive.

Hi @jtrudel246,
Can you elaborate a bit on your use case? Are you backing up multiple user profile folders in Windows to Google Drive?

Here is a little diagram of what i would like to do. Basically, i want to back up folders that aren’t located in the oDrive directory, without moving them there either. I’m wondering if oDrive has this type of functionality. Beyond the user folders, i have other folders which i would like to have the same function. For example, a program that i have that runs from a folder directly on the C: drive. It has to stay in that location, so the only option would be to copy it to the google drive folder.

Hi @jtrudel246,
It sounds like what you are looking for is the “sync to odrive” feature.

Take a look at the documentation here and see if it will satisfy your use case: https://docs.odrive.com/docs/manage-sync#section-sync-external-folders

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