Discover How to use Backup and Sync from Google

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Backup and Sync from Google-Spend in the best families. One day you will turn on the computer and … nothing. The tower is dead. The vicissitudes of the destination have wanted your hard drive or SSD to fail without prior notice, taking ahead whole quarters of invoices just before the declaration of the rent. It is a tragedy that we could have avoided using Backup and Sync from Google.

Backup and Sync from Google is nothing more than the tool designed to replace the old Google Drive application for computers. With it we can automate the realization of backup copies and synchronization of documents with a Drive account. Making it possible to save a duplicate of our most precious files in the cloud, with the benefit that you can also access them from any mobile device.

Although Backup and Sync is a program with very few options, its operation is not entirely intuitive. Novice users may encounter certain problems when using it for the first time. So we will try to resolve any possible doubts about its use with this tutorial.

Table of Contents

Set up your Gmail account

The first step after installing Backup and Sync is to access the Google Drive account where we want to store our files. As you already know, just by having a Gmail address you already have 15 GB of free cloud storage in Drive , a capacity that many people never use.

The authentication process is classic: just enter your email address and password. Then you will receive a confirmation message on your phone to verify your identity. It’s that simple.

It should be noted that Backup and Sync from Google can cause problems during the user identification process. Sometimes the screen goes blank trying to authenticate the user. Almost as if it had been blocked.

This situation can be disconcerting, particularly because the error is repeated again and again even if we close Backup and Sync from Google or try to access with another account.

Select the folders you want to save in Drive

We are already in flour. We have accessed from Backup and Sync to our Google account and we can now prepare our first backup. Which folders do you want to select? Our recommendation is that you think well about what you want to save in the cloud and add the corresponding directories.

It should be noted that Backup and Sync does not allow copying specific files in themselves. But entire folders with all the documents that may be inside. In other words. You cannot upload the invoice.xls file by selecting it with the mouse. But you must mark the Invoices folder and send it to drive with all its contents.

For this reason it may be convenient to make a good organization of our files on the hard drive. We should also note that Backup and Sync incorporates a synchronization space with Google Photos. If you check this box. All the photos that you upload from a directory on your PC can also be viewed from your mobile phone using Google Photos.

Another aspect that may be interesting is the speed and data upload. If you have an Internet connection via fiber optics. You may want to leave everything as it is, but if you are going to make large backups and do not want to lose speed when accessing multimedia content in high resolution. Maybe you should specify how much bandwidth reservations to Backup and Sync to be able to enjoy enough flow for the rest of the activities.

Synchronize your PC with the cloud

We arrived here at the third and last step of the tutorial: synchronize your Google Drive with your PC. It is possible that some people prefer to use Backup. And Sync only to save backup copies of their PC in the cloud. While others prefer to keep all their files in one place. It sounds similar, but it is not the same.

In essence, what we achieve with file synchronization is to make a reciprocal copy on the PC of our Google Drive space. And vice versa. Said even more simply: if you delete a file from your PC. The copy you had saved in Google Drive will be deleted. And if you delete the copy of Google Drive, the same will happen with the original that you save on your PC.

Also, all the files that we may already have stored in our Google Drive account will be downloaded to our PC. The synchronization folder is called Google Drive and is located under the root folder Users. Any document or folder that you save there will be automatically uploaded to your Drive account. And if you decide to delete them. The same thing will happen with your copies in the cloud.

While this may sound simple, many people are alarmed when they decide to clean in Google Drive. And Backup and Sync warns that by deleting a file available in the cloud will also delete its counterpart in the PC. It is important to be clear about what the concept of file synchronization entails. If you still have doubts, you can use several unimportant files to try.

Do not go crazy: create elimination rules

One way to avoid possible complications when deleting synchronized files is to establish a deletion rule. This option only appears after you have configured Backup and Sync.

The rules section allows to establish the action that we want to carry out when deleting a file from the PC. As it comes by default Backup and Sync will always ask you if you want the files deleted on your PC to be deleted also in Drive and vice versa.

Assuming you do not touch anything, Backup and Sync will always show you a dialog box asking if you want to delete the files in all the places where they are stored when you try to delete a synchronized document. For security reasons, if you click on delete or restore the copy that you have not manually deleted will be maintained.

In case you still do not have clear things, our recommendation is to mark the option of not removing elements in all locations. In this way. Even if you accidentally delete a synchronized file from your PC You will always have your backup copy in Google Drive.

Avoid scares: keep a daily backup

Having a backup copy of our most precious documents can save us enormous headaches. That is why applications such as Backup and Sync are of great help when it comes to recovering files. We thought were lost after losing a laptop or losing the contents of the hard disk due to a virus.

While this type of operation was done by hand and using an external hard drive, Backup and Sync is responsible for doing this type of operations automatically and using the cloud. Just have it active in the background so you always keep a copy synchronized with our Google Drive space.

With that said, Backup and Sync from Google also have its limitations. The most important of these is that we cannot program it to save copies of specific files automatically. If we want to do this we must manually open our local folder Google Drive. And copy there the file we want to synchronize with our Google Drive account.

On the other hand, Backup and Sync from Google depends clearly on the storage space. We have available in our Drive account. This means that if we start to make backup copies of photos. And videos we will probably quickly end up with the free quota offered by Google. We therefore recommend that you be selective and focus on the files that you really want to protect. Or failing that, consider a Google paid account.