External HD to Google drive

General
1

Hi …newbie non technical guy here…

I have tried to copy my External HD to google drive but as I understand there needs to be some space on the computer drive for it to do that. Anyhow it didnt work. As a result of my research I found syncthing.

My question is can I use syncthing to first upload to google drive and then like on weekly basis plug the HD in to sync the changes to Google drive as a backup.

Thanks :pray:

2

Syncthing syncs the same folder between two or more machines that you own.

Syncthing has no relation/functionality related to google drive.

3

Oh no… So I cant use syncthing? Do you have any advice?

4

I don’t think so.

If I understand correctly, your ultimate goal is to sync some mostly offline sometimes online drive to google drive, none of which are use cases for syncthing.

Syncthing syncs online local storage between two different machines, it does not support syncing on the same machine.

In theory you could run two instances of syncthing but I am not sure that will work well with the destination being a local clone of your remote google drive.

Why aren’t you just using google drive to sync the drive?

5

I did try… The computer doesnt have enough resources somehow… I keep getting errors that theres not enough space on the computer…I will have to try to sync folder by folder I guess but its really a burden as its about 500 GB.

6

If you are just looking for a way to backup your computer, I, as a user, highly recommend backblaze.

Sure, you can’t as easily access files like you can with google drive, but it’s a better backup solution than google drive is, as it has temporality, so you can recover you data in case of ransom ware.

7

Thanks… will look into backblaze

One last question… Can I use syncthing to sync one folder from my computer to my android phone?

8

Yes, but Syncthing cannot write to external storage on Android and in current Android versions, even some former accessible internal storage folders are now protected.

9

Thanks so much. I have syncthing in place and its syncing my laptop to my android. :pray:

10

You can use Syncthing with Google Drive. Sort of…

If you already sync your Google Drive folders with your local computer using Google Drive for desktop, you can simply point Syncthing to a folder inside your Google Drive folder structure. That way you get sync between local folders on your different devices plus bonus cloud access & backup via Google Drive.

I walk through this here: Joining the Evernote Exodus: Step-by-step Obsidian setup with Syncthing (plus Google Drive cloud backup) | by Ben Bland | Dec, 2023 | Medium

Note: I’m a Syncthing newbie so apologies if I’ve got something mixed up here.

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