Hands down, google drive is one of the most powerful online free cloud storage integrations that can keep you alive with its easy to manage interface and will save your day.
It has huge exclusive features of different facilities which will help you to do a lot of things in this single platform and also make it super easy for you.
Google docs, sheets, slides, for instance, google drive mostly famous for its Microsoft compatible document management features called google docs. This feature will let your work like Microsoft Word when you don’t have to face trouble with any software installation or buying product keys.
Also, google drive has another feature that most people have been aware of. Since google drive is a built in function in almost every android system. Google offers a free 15 GB storage for the drive where users can store anything they want.
However, google drive is so much easier to use for mobile users. Whenever they need to store, download or do anything in their drive, just click on the drive apps icon.
But for desktop or PC builders, it is not found as a built in program. The access system is quite different for PC users. If you are one of them and lack the knowledge of how you can access your google drive through a PC, then this article will help you to get this.
So, don’t waste your valuable time, let’s direct drive into the discussion here below,
Contents
What is the easiest way to access google drive with a PC?
When you are a desktop user and you have to deal with complex issues, then you must need a PC although. PC provides more flexibility and allows us to do things that cannot be done with mobile.
Think about the post that I have written for you to let you know the way you can use it to access google drive on your PC. I have written this post with Google docs instead of Microsoft word. Frankly, I like the way it works, because, on the one hand, I can accomplish all my written documents through this. On the other hand, I can also manage spreadsheets with huge keywords, planning with them, and so on.
However, if you also want to make google docs as well as google drive your default working platform, then you have to log in to the Google account on the browser at first where all of your important files and programs you store.
After logged in, you will see on the upper right hand of your google chrome window this,
In the image, you can see a dotted option, if you click on that, a menu will appear to you just like the image where you can see all the google services listed. From the list, you can choose google drive to access on your personal google drive.
How to put google drive on your desktop?
There was a time when people only know about drop box because it was taking all the fame as the best online cloud storage. At that time, people weren’t aware of the versatile feature of google drive and don’t know how to claim full advantage of it.
Google has added an extreme feature in its drive called backup and sync. The feature allows google users to work flawlessly, keep track of all their important files and programs, and even bookmarks they have previously added.
However, in the above, you see the easiest way to enter google drive and do whatever you want with it. But what if you have a desktop google drive icon and you don’t have to backup manually. Isn’t it more flexible?
Of course, it is, when you install google drive on your PC, it will leave a separate and distinct shortcut on your PC and enable your computer to sync files to google drive automatically.
Therefore, it is more conducive to have a google drive desktop icon on your PC. Here is how you can install google drive on your PC.
Download google drive on desktop
To download google drive on your PC, you have to log out of the existing google account on your browser temporarily. Then go to drive.google.com, in the bottom of the page you will see ‘download for PC/Mac’. Select the required download file type.
When you click on the individual download button, a pop-up window will appear including proceed the operation button like it.
Then your download will start instantly in the Chrome taskbar. After finishing the download, click on the download file and install it.
Once the installation will finish, click on the close button and you will see a separate google drive window on your computer screen.
The window includes ‘Welcome to backup and sync’ and instructs you to click on ‘get started button.
Then you have to type your Google account address and password and next to finish the process.
After that, you have set up files and folders which you want to back up from your desktop to google drive. No problem, the function will appear automatically and you don’t have to face any trouble with this.
Google always prioritizes user satisfaction and sets all their available options through the way users can easily understand what they have to do in which step. Go back to the installation process, Google will let you control which of your files you want to back up on the drive like this,
In this stage, you can take such actions to set up your google drive for instance,
- Choose individual files or whole files of a folder to back up on the drive
- You can also choose google drive files to save on your computer
- Set image quality while uploading them in your drive
How google drive backup and sync works?
Interestingly, most people don’t know that the name of the application they used to call ‘google drive’ has been dead since 2017. Google retired it and replaced a brand-new integration in its place called ‘Backup and sync’.
Although, Google has separate system apps for its free cloud storage which is google drive, and also one for store images which are google photos.
Simply, backup and sync are a distinct app of google drive which is used to backup images, videos, word files, presentations, slides, etc to google drive and specifically images and videos to google photos. It has a huge benefit and it makes users’ experience smooth and flexible, therefore, I personally want to give many thanks to google.
However, if you are a starter and don’t know about the functionalities of google backup and sync, then you are missing a lot about it. In the above, we have seen how to install google drive on the desktop system.
But it is highly important to use it properly and take full advantage of this great google service. Here we are discussing the same below.
Backup and sync functionalities
When you are a full time desktop worker, then you have to deal with so many programs, files, data, and information to save on your PC. Not only PC, but you also use smartphones, SD cards, and digital cameras for various reasons. So, it really seems difficult to keep your files always safe, backed up, and organized especially when you are very busy.
But things have changed and we have now modern solutions to make our day easier and faster. Google Drive backup and sync are some kinds of Aladdin’s magic lamps that take the duty to keep everything organized, safe and backup in it.
From my personal experience, I love this backup and sync because once my windows were crashed. At that time, I used to store so much important information in my google browser, bookmarked a lot of resources that came to my needs.
Therefore, when I realized that I had to reinstall windows and google chrome browser, I got shocked if I turned back all of my important resources ever.
Fortunately, one of my colleagues informed me about the backup and sync option and when I reinstalled chrome browser and signed in with my previous google account, it took just a minute to return all of my information. How?
As you can see in the image above, there is an option to turn on sync, at the moment you have logged in with your Google account. You can see your account profile picture in the top right corner of the window. If you click on that, you will see the above ‘turn on sync’ option.
Once you will turn on sync, you can see all your previous data, bookmarked websites and even extensions you have pinned get placed automatically.
In this way, you can back up your PC files and folders directly to your drive through the google drive desktop option and similarly, you can also transfer google drive files into your PC. Along with these good sides, backup and sync have some flaws. They are,
- Security risk if you don’t protect carefully
- Files aren’t immune from ransomware attacks
- could infect the files on the computer and cloud via Google File Stream
- Sharing files and folders massively can cause a security risk
- Slow download and upload speed
- Poor search capabilities to locate files and folders that need
How to set up backup and sync with your computer?
From the above discussion, we know that sync is a two way transportation system that creates a tunnel to safely pass files, resources, images, videos, and whatever you want between your google drive and computer.
To ensure the highest benefit through this, you have to set the backup and sync wisely so that you will keep always up to date with all your necessary information.
With the google drive application installed on your computer, you can particularly backup
- Only files of your desktop
- Only document files such as words, spreadsheets, presentations
- All the images at once
You can instantly upload all your computer images directly into your google photos through the option ‘Upload photos and videos to google photos’.
As said above, sync can be two way street, look at the image here below,
It shows two particular options which are,
- Sync my drive to this computer
- Sync everything in my drive
- Sync only these folders
The third option ‘sync only these folders’ will help you to choose specific files and folders to sync. Those you will choose will sync and the rest won’t.
Remember that files you sync from outside your drive folder won’t show up in the drive alongside all your other files. To access those files, head to google drive on the web and click on ‘My computers’ in the left menu bar. The option is also available in the google drive mobile app.
How to find a google drive folder to access on your computer?
Once you are done with syncing and backing up files and folders of your google drive and computer. Now you can easily access the files which you stored in your google drive from your PC.
Intentionally, google drive folders are submitted on the C drive of your PC. Therefore, if you want to see those files, then you have to take the route like, ‘C:\USERS\” YOUR USER NAME”\GOOGLE DRIVE’.
But if you want quick access to those files, you have to adjust a little setting on your computer. To set up the settings, go to the location given above. You can access all the google drive files under the main ‘Google Drive’ folder.
Choose the folder, right-click on it and click on “Pin to Quick Access”.
When your computer is open and you enter ‘This PC’ you can see in the left menu bar has one drive which is another best cloud storage function provided by the operating system Microsoft word. You can also find a drop box option in that explorer’s sidebar once you install drop box in the system.
But when you are mainly a google drive user, you are feeling the need for a google drive option instead of one drive there, isn’t it?
Therefore, you need to embed the google drive option in your file explorer’s sidebar to quickly access the files and folders you have synced in your drive.
However, you can use various methods to set up a quick access system in your drive from the PC. I am showing you some of these here below,
Method – 1
Open the web browser and go to the GitHub webpage, you will see an option ‘CODE’ click on that and download the google drive zip archive. After installing the zip file, you have extracted the file, then you can get options like this,
Then you have to follow the instructions given below,
- Open GoogleDrive.reg in your favorite text editor
- Update the %USERPROFILE% values for TargetFolderPath so that the final value is the full path to your Google Drive folder. Ensure that you use \\ in the folder path structure. eg. “TargetFolderPath”=”C:\\Users\\User name\\Google Drive”
- If you chose to create the Google Drive folder in a custom location on your PC, like on your D: drive, you should change all the TargetFolderPath values to that location. For example, if you created it in “D:\Google Drive”, change the TargetFolderPath like this: “TargetFolderPath” = “D:\\Google Drive”. Make sure to use \\ (double-backslash) instead of \ (single backslash) in the folder structure!
- Save all changes
- Double-click GoogleDrive.reg to install and ensure you click yes when prompted
After finishing, you will see google drive as a listed option in your file explorer’s sidebar like below.
Method – 2
If you don’t want to do it with the fancy style shown above, then there is also the easiest way to include google drive as a quick access option. Unlike the way, you can add google drive as a quick access function and also as a library option on your computer.
In this method, we will see the way to add google drive to your quick access bar. For this, you have to go to the google drive shortcut on your desktop and right click on that. Then choose to ‘Pin quick access option’ from the list and you will find the google drive option on your quick access bar. Although, you can unpin it simply, just right clicking on the icon and choosing to unpin.
Method – 3
This is the method where you have to create a library option to get google drive in the windows explorer sidebar. It is similar to the pin feature or making a new folder and adding that to the sidebar and according to your preference, you can create multiple libraries and rename them.
To apply this method, you have to right click on the google drive desktop icon and choose include in library option and then select the ‘create new library’ option.
It will create a google drive library in the windows file explorer from where you can easily access your drive.
How do you clear storage on Google Drive?
Since google drive is not unlimited and it offers just 15 GB of storage which sometimes isn’t enough to maintain all your needed files being stored. Therefore, we have to clear or delete files to clean some storage and use that to store some others.
For your convenience, when you delete any of your driver files, it doesn’t delete permanently at that time. It takes place in the ‘trash’ section and then erases automatically after 30 days of your deletion.
You can restore files from your trash before the 30-day time window. You can also permanently delete them to empty your trash. If you delete, restore, or permanently delete multiple files or folders at once, it might take time for you to notice the changes.
Is uninstalling google drive from the desktop will delete the contents?
No, it is not, once you have backed up any files, folders, images in your google drive from the desktop. That means it will remain until you single handedly delete those files directly from your google drive.
If you uninstall the google drive app from the desktop or you disconnect your account from the app. No worry, it will not delete drive files. Still, you can access those synced drive files from the google drive web and the mobile apps.
You can find these files in the Computer folder of your drive. Finally, google drive is getting popular over all the other online cloud storage services. It is especially a kind of built in the program in all android smartphones. Therefore, android mobile users use it to store images and other important information from their mobile phones. And those, who also use it as their main cloud storage free to access important resources from anywhere, have to maintain good care of their google drive. Hope this article will help you accelerate your google drive experience and also manage it from your desktop properly.