I’m a relatively new user and I seem to have made a mistake out of excitement of using odrive. First, I have to acknowledge, as I have done before, that this solution of being able to browse through my files using placeholders, then downloading the ones needed and re-uploading has no equal. In fact, even if there is an equal, it would be hard to surpass odrive’s ease. One of the best investments I have made in the world of cloud computing.
At any rate, out of my excitement to start using odrive, I started uploading files to my Google Drive all willy-nilly, i.e. I bypassed the syncing feature and started dragging and dropping files and folders into odrive’s folder in the hopes that I can upload a lot at once. I opted to do this because currently, the only thing lacking on odrive for me, is the ability to multi-select and sync files. However, the dragging and dropping method, as I learned ‘too late’, doesn’t give me the ability to sync new files to already uploaded folders, since there was no connection established in the beginning.
So as I stand, I have a bunch of folders uploaded to Google Drive, but not synced which poses two problems:
1. The parent directory that I simply should have synced in the beginning contains sub-folders that have been uploaded to odrive but also contains other sub-folders that haven’t been been uploaded (because I hadn’t gotten to dragging and dropping them). The only way I feel I can safely upload them is by using the drag and drop method? If I sync the parent folder, what happens? 2. I know I have added new files to directories that I have already uploaded but haven’t copied those same files to the source directory, and perhaps syncing from source to destination may delete destination files? I don’t even remember all of the changes I made and have not manually synced.
As you can see, I have created a headache for myself and apart from starting over or taking a manual approach to addressing the discrepancy problem, I don’t know if anything can be done. Also, since I realized my mistake I have been following the sync procedure to ensure integrity but I was wondering if there was a way to know by looking at/through the source files/folders if they exist on Google Drive.
If so, the following steps should get you sorted out.
Make sure the remote folder you want to sync to is the same exact name as the local folder you want to sync from. If it isn’t, you are going to want to rename either the local or the remote folder so that they match.
Right-click on the local folder (the parent directory you mentioned in your problem 1 above) and select “sync to odrive”. This will open a dialog where you will choose where you want to sync this local folder to. Navigate to the remote folder with the same name (see step 1) and select that as the destination folder.
This is going to create a sync relationship between the local folder and the remote folder. odrive will scan both sides to determine what files are already there and which files need to be uploaded. Files that are the same will be marked as synced, without having to go through another upload process. Files that have not yet been uploaded to the remote folder will then be uploaded. Any files that have been changed since upload will also be uploaded, overwriting the existing ones on the remote side. The process may take a while, depending on how much data there is to go through.
I believe this will give you the result you are looking for, but please let me know if I am missing something or if you have any questions.
Thank you so much for the quick response and the assurance that simply syncing the parent folder should sort out the issue generally. I will definitely do this as I should have in the beginning. The other question I have is what would happen if a specific folder/file exists on Google Drive but does not exist on the source drive? Would the folder in the destination be deleted (since it doesn’t exist in the source drive) or would that folder be downloaded to the source drive?
I think getting clarification on this would give me more confidence to move on.
Hi @khangp.com,
When you setup a “sync to odrive” folder you get a union of the remote and local content, with the local taking priority. So anything that already exists in the remote will be downloadable. Files on the local side that are not on the remote will be uploaded. Cases where there is a different version of the file on the local side will be uploaded, replacing the file that is there.
Thank you again for confirming that. Looks like I have nothing to worry about as my content will remain in tact in either situation. I guess I may not have given you all the details because when I went to sync the local parent folder, an error occurred saying “This folder already has an odrive folder inside”. I had no idea this could be a problem.
When I was initially was doing the uploading, I had created the file structure manually on Google Drive and simply uploaded the content manually. Obviously, now I have a mix of stuff, some of which was synced while other was dragged.
Hi @khangp.com,
You can “remove sync” on any folders you previously setup, then “sync to odrive” on the top level. Remove sync just removes the relationship, it will not remove any files. You can see which folders have a “sync to odrive” relationship setup from the odrive menu under “sync to odrive”.
You’ve been great. Everything you have mentioned has been logical thus far. I just go into panic mode so I apologize for my ignorance. I should have connected the dots and new that an “undo” on the synced folder should have brought things back to square one.
Thanks again! I’m now a more informed user and I look forward to relying on odrive for years to come!
How do I get out of this mess?