Read This Before Backing up Your Files on Clouds such as Google Drive

Did your laptop just crash? Do you think you can easily restore your files from a backed-up copy on Google Drive? Read on...

In this article I want to share my recent experience on Google Drive, which I think may prove useful to those who need to restore files on their crashed system from Google Drive.

It is not my intent to find faults with G Drive - it is an indispensable service - but merely to highlight learnings that may benefit others in a similar situation.

Will it happen?

For many years I have been relying on a local external hard drive to backup data from my laptop. Recently I purchased a Google One plan and made a copy of my backed-up data on cloud with their easy Google Backup and Sync software. Voila, I had my whole hard drive online! I was delighted that I could now access all my files from anywhere, anytime and from any device, share instantly with anyone, and have a reliable backup in case the laptop or external hard drive failed. I regularly backed from my laptop to my external drive (for portability and handy retrieval) and configured Google Drive to backup the external hard drive on cloud. The minimalistic interface of Backup and Sync software was a breeze. I could even edit my files on cloud directly using the Web Interface or the Mobile App and the changes would sync up with the files on my external drive.

Then it happened!

Three months ago, my laptop conked out. I kept calm and buried it with honors :) I was saved because I had saved (pun :)), redundantly, on the external hard drive as well as on cloud. I got a new laptop and restored the data from the external drive. There you are - all back to normal, or so I thought. While I had not installed Google Backup and Sync software yet, I continued to update my cloud data directly using the Google Drive web interface (https://drive.google.com/).

After I had settled down with my new laptop, I decided to install Backup and Sync, connect my data to the cloud and get back to a sync-up routine like before. Like the rest of our universe, G Drive also follows Murphy's Laws - expect the unexpected!

The data is there...

When Backup and Sync software runs on your laptop, it creates a folder called My Laptop on your Google Drive, and backs up all the data inside it:

So I had my precious data from my previous laptop all backed-up in a cute little My Laptop folder on cloud. When I installed G Drive backup software on my new laptop, I expected it to connect the folders of my external drive to the folders already existing on cloud. Sure :)

...but cannot be accessed on your new laptop!

Guess what, the backup software completely ignored the previous backup, creating a new folder called My Laptop(1) on Google Drive for my new laptop and started uploading the entire data once again from scratch to the new folder!

Old backup doesn't matter anymore

I couldn't find a way to tell Google Drive that my data was already backed up, and that all it needed to do was just connect the local folders to ones already existing on cloud. The simplistic, abstracted user interface doesn't allow for much configuration; most aspects are defaulted with no way to change. Too much simplicity didn't help here!

Drive began uploading the gigabytes all over again to the new My Laptop(1) folder!

Meanwhile, all the updates done to my files on the cloud using my mobile app and/or the web interface (https://drive.google.com) were left dangling in my old My Laptop folder!

Helpdesk were helpless

At this rate it would take me well over 3 weeks of constantly keeping the laptop on and connected, to re-upload a TB of content. Even then, it would not have the updates made directly on the old Backup. That was extremely frustrating and, in my opinion, negated the very purpose of having a cloud backup!

My first action was the most obvious - reach out to customer support. Both on chat and on email, Google Drive customer support confirmed that each new device will necessarily create a separate folder and there is no way to connect it to a previous backup.

They also confirmed that they didn't have a tool that could compare the old and new backups and highlight the differences. Basically they said - backing-up is our baby, restoring is yours!

A feature request to Google

(This part is a bit technical) It would be great if Google Drive could just have folders on the cloud instead of scoping them to devices. Making the backup mechanism device-specific defeats its own the purpose, IMHO. All that the G Drive needs to do is provide a configuration in the backup client that asks whether a new My Laptop folder should be created or an existing one used. Simple and logical.

Ok, so until Google figures it out

I tried out a few ways to work around the problem:

One - Restore from a local copy, wait for Drive to upload it to cloud, then manually move changes

This is the default approach, but not necessarily efficient.

1. Restore data on your new laptop device from a previously made local copy (such as external drive)
2. Install Backup and Sync software
3. Wait for it to backup (upload) all the data to a new My Laptop(1) folder
4. Open the old My Laptop folder online, and check the Activity section. Here you will find a stream of all updates that you made directly using the web interface. It should look something like this:
   

   

5. From this list of changes, consider only the ones that you did AFTER your old computer crashed (those are the ones that did not sync up with your local copy). Download these changed files or move them manually to the new My Laptop(1) folder. These will then be synced up to your new laptop as well.
6. When you are done with moving all changes, delete the old My Laptop folder on cloud.

Note that this needs a long time (even days or weeks) depending on your net speed and data size, as all the data needs to be uploaded.

Two - No local copy? Restore by downloading from Google Drive

If you never made a local copy of your data (such as using an external drive) before your machine crashed, you can-

1. Download all the data from your old My Laptop cloud folder to your new laptop device
2. Install Backup and Sync software
3. Wait for it to backup (upload) all the data to a new My Laptop(1) folder
4. Delete the old My Laptop folder on cloud

The advantage of this approach is that you don't need to move changes manually - they are included in the download from the old My Laptop folder. The downside is that it needs double the time and bandwidth as compared to approach One, because the data needs to be first downloaded, then uploaded in entirety.

Three - Restore by moving the old backup into new folders

This approach involves only download and no upload, and hence should be much faster than One or Two.

1. Create empty folders on your new laptop with the same names as the ones you backed up to your old My Laptop folder on cloud. Basically you replicate your previous folder structure except that they don't contain any files.
2. Install Backup and Sync software
3. Sync up the blank folders to cloud (maybe with just a dummy file in each). This creates an empty folder structure in your new My Laptop(1) folder that replicates your old My Laptop folder.
4. Open your old My Laptop folder on the web interface, get inside your folders and Move each one manually to the new My Laptop(1) folder. This should be easy because you are likely to have only a handful of root level folders 
   
5. Now you will have moved your latest files, including any direct updates, in your new My Laptop(1) folder. They will eventually be synced (downloaded) to the empty folders that you created on your laptop device.

Note that this approach also involves downloading your entire backup over the internet, which may require a long time depending on your speed and bulk, although it will be faster than approaches One or Two.

Four - Hybrid approach

This is probably the quickest approach, and because it is not officially documented by Google, is the reason for writing this article.

1. Follow approach Three all the way until the penultimate step - you will then have the latest files in your new My Laptop(1) folder on cloud
2. The difference is in the last step - restore the files in each of the empty folders on your laptop device from a previously made local copy (from the external drive)
3. Now the backup software will recognize that most files exist both locally and on cloud, and will sync (download) only the differences. The difference will only consist of direct updates made using the web interface or mobile app.

This should be significantly faster than other approaches as this involves moving changed files only.

Summing it up

My takeaway from this experience is that using a cloud backup does not exempt you from creating a local copy. The local copy is highly recommended so as to make restoring easy, even if you are backing up on cloud.

Hope you found this useful! This article may become outdated eventually as new features are added to G Drive, but for now feel feel to comment and leave suggestions if you have a better way of doing this, which may help others. Have a great day!