11 ms·

Disable Google Drive drive letter

108 points by mikalauskas 5y ago

grenoire 5y ago
Guys... honest question. What happened to settings menus? Why are we taking away configuration from users' hands?
- swayson 5y ago
  No idea, not sure if it is the next generation of users, forcing the change, or something more nefarious. ultimately, "control is an illusion"
  - marderfarker2 5y ago
    You already lost control when you let someone else store your files for you. This drive letter issue is just a GUI problem.
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      In any normal market, the customer is the one is control, because they are the one paying. Something is seriously rotten.
      - atatatat 5y ago
        That would be the tech knowledge of the individual. Record lows, considering the pervasive tech. We've taken the opportunity of technological advancement and turned it into societal devolvement in the name of convenience, instead.
  - Gigachad 5y ago
    What kind of evil plot do you think google is behind here? Seems like a completely legitimate change to me.
    - swayson 5y ago
      Slippery slope, slowly conditioning people, and before you know it. Only a select few may have the ability to use general computers. Speculation, but plausible. I'd look at the broader trends, not just this one event. Rather, the series of events and the dark pattern behind it.
- Gigachad 5y ago
  Configuration adds complexity and is a huge source of confusion for users. Google drive strikes me as something that should just work and be so simple that you do not have to configure it. There does not seem to be any genuine reason to make this change a setting because the main objection is just "I don't like it" rather than "it stops me from doing x" or "it makes x harder" It would be much less painful to just have users get used to the new behavior than to support a setting for forever. For people who want full power, custom clients exist for google drive which can work however you want. We see a constant trend where users move towards products which just work rather than require manuals and configuration. Seems only sane that general public products like google drive should cater to this and if you want full power over everything, you have 3rd party clients, nextcloud, ftp, etc.
  - mjw1007 5y ago
    I don't think it's safe to reason from what the "main" objection is. I see one of the comments on that page is: « I just installed the new Google Drive desktop client (Win 10 pro) and the new virtual drive it creates triggers a non-compliance issue with ClearPass OnGuard that my employer requires (because the drive is not encrypted) and thus prevents me from connecting to their VPN. » Maybe this OnGuard thing is being foolish, but that's no comfort to the user.
    - Silhouette 5y ago
      Maybe this OnGuard thing is being foolish Maybe, but if corporate policy requires all storage to be encrypted and the tool to enforce that policy can't verify that whatever Google's software is doing is compliant, maybe not. Different policies might be appropriate for software that is used by non-experts in a personal capacity and software that is part of professionally managed IT systems used for business purposes with regulatory compliance obligations. A lot of the modern trends from the likes of Google, Apple and Microsoft might make sense for the former group but they are a significant concern for the latter and for prosumer or small business users who might want to operate more like the latter but are stuck with software aimed at the former.
  - danielheath 5y ago
- aclelland 5y ago
  I've come to accept that it's just a cost cutting measure for larger tech companies, why offer users an option when you don't need to? It costs extra to document, test and offer support for. I can't really think of any software from a major tech company that I use frequently and that's been updated to give me _more_ toggles to customize the app. It's always to take things away.
  - Gigachad 5y ago
    Apple actually does really well at this where it matters. Their accessibility settings allow a huge amount of customization for making the devices easier to use for disabled people. They just don't have android rom style settings like changing the unlock screen to swipe down rather than up or turning the battery indicator in to a circle.
    - dannyw 5y ago
      Configurability matters in a lot more cases than just accessibility. example: set Spotify to be the default music app.
    - atatatat 5y ago
      Or the ability to change your system apps.
  - simion314 5y ago
    Exactly. For example on a small company we had one user that needed RTL support, this ment we create backend code to store his perferences, front end code to add UI for it and testing the feature. We implemented because for a small company each user is important where big companies or projects(Firefox,GNOME will force this minorities to go elsewhere)
    - asvitkine 5y ago
      Uhm, there are literally hundreds of millions of people in the world that use RTL languages. For mainstream, global software this is not a niche feature but a core requirement.
- thih9 5y ago
  I guess companies are more interested in mainstream users than in technical users. The former are a larger group that seems easier to attract and retain, they mostly use defaults and don’t care that much about dark patterns. Google has been following this approach for years now, simplifying the UX in a way that both 1. makes the product easier to use and 2. in a way that benefits Google. Google has merged the url bar and the search bar in chrome, they force defaults on google search, and not long ago [1] we were discussing removing detailed cookie controls. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28407656 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28407656
  - usui 5y ago
    I would like to posit the idea that all feature changes target #2 far more than #1: to benefit Google as an org. What if the emphasis of mainstream users is overstated? I find it more likely that an organization could be shaping features to coax its users into submission to make the org's life easier. "Yes, mainstream users want this simplification. No, we can't share the data or methodology in which we surmised this. Yes, this makes our life vastly easier, but we want to excuse it by pinning it on mainstream users." I've seen power apps (so by definition all the users are very technical and should not be patronized) that use the same reason to cut features instead of saying outright that it's too much to support. Maybe for a big org like Google it would be an admission of embarrassment.
- antaviana 5y ago
  They want to hide complexity and reduce surface of support to make products usable by a much, much larger audience than before. The poweruser needs to die to accomplish this goal.
- zmix 5y ago
  It's just like in authoritarian politics...
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  It's lazy and greedy and arrogant. It's catering to the lowest common denominator, pushing users into a cycle of manipulation and constant change, preventing any nuanced use of software, forcing users to increased dependence on a walled garden. It's a dark pattern - don't let people use the software in unexpected ways that might take potential profit away from another service or future feature. If any use gives more value than was intended, that use will be curtailed, then properly monetized elsewhere, or simply (and more often than not) shut off. If combinations of available settings reveal an actual bug, sometimes it's easier to take away the options than to fix the bug. But if it's simply a case that the software is doing things the developers don't want for any of the above reasons, they claim users are too incompetent to be trusted, and that they're removing the option for the good of the user. It's a gross and vapid perverse incentive endemic to FAANG. Good solutions exist for complexity and user configurations, like snapshots, reset to default, and so on. There's no excuse for mature software to lose configurability.
  - ljm 5y ago
    Going with Occam's Razor, I think it's really just as simple as product/engineering not making this kind of feature a priority. Plus, we're talking about Google here, so this new desktop version was 99% likely to have been rebuilt as an MVP.
    - nixass 5y ago
      > Plus, we're talking about Google here Exactly the point the referred poster was making. Google does nothing without monetization in mind
      - kettleballroll 5y ago
        As opposed to which other company?
        tux3 5y ago
        Mozilla? They're not the paragon of virtue I want them to be, but it sure fucking ain't Google. My point is that there are shades and degrees of bad behavior. It's a mistake to handwave every company as equally bad. That feeling is how you normalize horribly immoral things.
- yosito 5y ago
  > Why are we taking away configuration from users' hands? Because users are the product, not the customers. Time to choose a cloud provider with a different business model.
- izacus 5y ago
  It's just... easier for engineers. Less to test, less code, less to think about. And right now, all software is being built at the pleasure of the software engineers - this is why you're also seeing shift towards things like Electron apps and less options and worse UX. It's just easier for the guy programming it and noone really cares about user experience because there's no real competition. I mean, what are you going to do, use a 3rd party client for Google's services? You're not allowed to - at least not on the same service level.
  - noahadavis 5y ago
    > I mean, what are you going to do, use a 3rd party client for Google's services? You're not allowed to - at least not on the same service level. 3rd party Google Drive clients have been the only type of Google Drive client on Linux for a long time. Probably the only good graphical client is this one and it's actually pretty good: https://www.insynchq.com/ https://www.insynchq.com/
Retric 5y ago
Calling that an upgrade is interesting editorializing, forced downgrade is more like it. This is about as helpful as being forced to add an icon to your desktop, o well easy enough to use other software.
pedro2 5y ago
Google Backup & Sync is being replaced by Google Drive for Desktop, née Google [Drive] File Stream. Unlike Dropbox, where filenames are searchable by name on Everything, here that doesn't seem to happen -- at least the indexing takes more than 15 minutes with UI frozen. An interesting tidbit: Google Filestream allows mounting on a folder. Google Drive for Desktop doesn't support it yet. Another interesting tidbit: the configuration settings in Google Drive for Desktop was migrated to a JSON setting stored on a registry setting (just in case you try following the settings of Google Drive Filestream).
- amatic 5y ago
  In Everything, try going to options -> folders, and add the google my drive folder. Seems to be working for me
- sumedh 5y ago
  > Google Backup & Sync is being replaced by Google Drive for Desktop Why does Google have this bad habit of changing product names, they do it with Chat as well.
  - deepsun 5y ago
    Promotions.
    - tyingq 5y ago
      I see you're being downvoted, but I do wonder to what degree that might be true. Working on a team that maintains something old isn't terribly glorious. Rename the product, and now you have a "product launch" on your resume.
      - deepsun 5y ago
        My comment wasn't downvoted, it's actually my most upvoted comment on HN.
    - zomglings 5y ago
jpalomaki 5y ago
Could this be the first step to migrate away from the folder sync? So eventually you would have just the virtual drive approach. Not an expert here, but I believe the folder sync is technically more difficult to get right and there’s likely lot of edge cases that give you lots of trouble.
- daniel_iversen 5y ago
  That seems plausible to me! I know at Dropbox we always spent a lot of time “playing nice” with the operating system while still providing a very deep and seamless integration. So much complexity and working with gnarly and changing APIs.
  - ncann 5y ago
    I'm curious, would you be able to describe some of that "playing nice" and the complexity of the API? Sounds like a good story time!
- blitzar 5y ago
  I am pretty sure this is one of the last steps not first steps. Been using this type of google drive for years now, mounts a virtual drive (with ability to always sync some folders locally + cache of contents). I do miss the idea of my local copy being a backup of the cloud contents, and having to be a bit more thoughtful about syncing up chunks of documents and folders for being disconnected. Given how large the amount of data actually stored is, and how little gets frequently used, it makes life a lot easier.
y4mi 5y ago
I've been using insync for years now. It's an alternative google drive client that also works on Linux. It works really well. I'm not affiliated with them, just a happy customer
- morganf 5y ago
  I second that love for Insync! And I'm also not affiliated.
2ion 5y ago
It needs to run with elevated privileges in order to do this, right? So into the trash it goes. This is right up there with keyboard and mice configuration software running as daemons with administration privileges.
- richardwhiuk 5y ago
  No, if you install the app just for the user who is logged in then you don't need elevated permissions to install or upgrade.
  - 2ion 5y ago
    So an unprivileged service can map drive letters on Windows?
    - muststopmyths 5y ago
      If the user is mapping a network location they have access to, obviously yes. I'm guessing this thing is probably exposed via WebDAV. edited a bit for clarity.
    - Pathogen-David 5y ago
      Yes. You don't see it often, but drives can be mounted per user session instead of at the system level. The easiest way to see this is to use subst to map a drive and then try to navigate to that drive from a UAC-elevated command line. (You won't see the drive since it exists in a different session.) Mapped network drives and drives shared over remote desktop are other examples of per-user mounts.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jonathanlydall 5y ago
The old one would often cause "this app is preventing Windows from shutting down", which normally would eventually resolve itself, but it was an annoying delay. Hopefully this new one is better in this regard. I was very annoyed at the "upgrade wizard", it felt like of steps and very disruptive. One screen with a few checkboxes should have sufficed, perhaps an optional "advanced" button for those who want it. Relatedly, I got more than one pop-up saying the new version was coming to which I felt "this is really not something you should bother me about before the actual upgrade".
LightG 5y ago
Reason 421 to ditch Google. They have a couple of things I find handy, but wouldn't trust them with my data if they paid for it (and they don't). It's not that I inherently don't trust them with privacy (though why should I?), it's the constant bullsh!t and bait and switch. And even that, I tried to pay them for something the other day (I felt I had to while I considered other options), for the pleasure of paying them, they wanted my passport, utility bill and other details. Erm, nope. They've collectively taken a dive off the deep end. I never felt I'd get to a place where I feel I trust Windows on a laptop more than I trust Google. /endrant
- blitzar 5y ago
  Funnily enough I trust them to keep my data safe more than pretty much any provider. Safe from everyone except themselves (google) of course, but then I litterally cant think of any provider/person I trust to not read stuff I put on their computer.
  - Kaze404 5y ago
    I don't. Just a few hours ago I noticed I started getting a bunch of guitar-related ads (like courses) after searching last night for a list of all the existing Guitar Hero guitars.
aymendjellal 5y ago
The virtual drive also breaks Win32DiskImager Took me forever to understand why it worked on my laptop but not my computer...
xg15 5y ago
Wild guess... but this sounds like the drive letter isn't really a feature but actually an implementation detail leaking through that they are trying to dress up as a feature. At least that would explain their insistence on users hiding the drive instead of removing it. I believe, previously they just had a daemon running on the client PC that synced a local folder with the cloud storage. (Like Dropbox) Now they seem to have switched to some sort of "fuse-but-on-windows" virtual device driver that accesses the cloud storage directly and presents it locally as a virtual drive. (Like OneDrive) Would this make sense?
- noisem4ker 5y ago
  That's exactly what it is, and what the old Google Drive File Stream was. Reading the comments here and in the linked forums, it seems I'm one of the few used to how Google Drive File Stream worked, and most of the complaints are coming from people more used to the folder-based variant, which has been now shoehorned into the other paradigm.
- ncann 5y ago
  I think so. I'm totally not familiar with the pros and cons of mounted drives but I assume there are some operations that are possible or easier to do when it's a mounted virtual drive vs a plain folder? Something related to file streaming where you need to detect that a file is accessed on the fly and "stream" it if it's not already available on local disk?
pityJuke 5y ago
In terms of bugs, I'd like to add a particularly interesting one, where for some reason, the latest Google Drive can cause UWP Icons to disappear. Now, this is some odd interaction between Google Drive and Windows, but it is... strange [0]. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/8jx5ym/google_drive_file_stream_causing_uwp_icons_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/8jx5ym/google_dr...
smoldesu 5y ago
If you have a server and like provisioning stuff, do yourself a favor and make a Nextcloud. You can run it off pretty much any hardware made in the past 10 years, and you straight-up don't need to deal with asinine workarounds like this. It's just like the old days, you and a WebDAV folder, as God intended. If you can't set up a server but still want a good sync solution, use Syncthing. It's a decentralized solution that doesn't require a main server, and lets you create incredibly intricate sync solutions.
svnpenn 5y ago
I use Rclone with BackBlaze for a while now, because fuck Google: https://github.com/rclone/rclone https://github.com/rclone/rclone
vmoore 5y ago
Interesting reply: > My solution is install Winaero Tweaker. It's free and very easy to disable the Google Drive letter. https://storage.googleapis.com/support-forums-api/attachment/message-125490210-13101903063865332100.gif https://storage.googleapis.com/support-forums-api/attachment... That looks like a handy tool for tweaking Windows 10. Always loved power-toys like that.
dirtyid 5y ago
Frustration with Google sheninangans turned me into a mainstream user who now accepts defaults and in retrospect, I don't miss a thing. Wonder if this is by design.
tambourine_man 5y ago
Use rclone and be happy. Seriously, I haven't tried Google Drive for Desktop but I won't even bother, given their track record. Rclone is simply amazing, the developers are responsive, it supports every backend on the planet. It's a single lightweight binary written in Go, runs on Linux, Mac, Win, x86 and ARM, every feature you could ever need, thoroughly documented… oh, and open source. I mean, what else could one want?
- hamandcheese 5y ago
  Looking at the rclone feature set, it’s not clear if it provides a daemon to continuously synchronize a folder. I imagine that this is high up on the list of what “normal users” care about. For power users, though, rclone does look quite nice.
  - tambourine_man 5y ago
    It doesn't. But you can set a script to sync it periodically and it allows you to mount any remote as a network drive. But of course, this is HN, a target audience that's generally to be able to use a command line tool and write a simple script. I wouldn't recommend it on a regular users forum.
- lostmsu 5y ago
  Syncthing is a better alternative.
sally1620 5y ago
Why can't they just do the same as dropbox or onedrive, where they use Windows file system filters on a regular folder (no mount points). To all the people who suggest alternatives, our entire org is run by xooglers and they put everything in Google Drive. I have no choice but to use this crap. To make matters worse, I cannot use any third-party client (or even roll my own) because it is not allowed by the security policy.
anaganisk 5y ago
I was once replied by a google engineer, “We put a lot of thought in things we do, we do whats best for users”. Well every time that arrogance goes wrong I paste this, to reinforce my belief on how google functions.
fiddyschmitt 5y ago
Does anyone know how it implements the virtual drive? I can't see any special drivers so it doesn't appear to be dokan/winfsp/winfuse.

108 points by mikalauskas 5y ago

grenoire 5y ago

Guys... honest question. What happened to settings menus? Why are we taking away configuration from users' hands?

swayson 5y ago
No idea, not sure if it is the next generation of users, forcing the change, or something more nefarious. ultimately, "control is an illusion"
- marderfarker2 5y ago
  You already lost control when you let someone else store your files for you. This drive letter issue is just a GUI problem.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    In any normal market, the customer is the one is control, because they are the one paying. Something is seriously rotten.
    - atatatat 5y ago
      That would be the tech knowledge of the individual. Record lows, considering the pervasive tech. We've taken the opportunity of technological advancement and turned it into societal devolvement in the name of convenience, instead.
- Gigachad 5y ago
  What kind of evil plot do you think google is behind here? Seems like a completely legitimate change to me.
  - swayson 5y ago
    Slippery slope, slowly conditioning people, and before you know it. Only a select few may have the ability to use general computers. Speculation, but plausible. I'd look at the broader trends, not just this one event. Rather, the series of events and the dark pattern behind it.
Gigachad 5y ago
Configuration adds complexity and is a huge source of confusion for users. Google drive strikes me as something that should just work and be so simple that you do not have to configure it. There does not seem to be any genuine reason to make this change a setting because the main objection is just "I don't like it" rather than "it stops me from doing x" or "it makes x harder" It would be much less painful to just have users get used to the new behavior than to support a setting for forever. For people who want full power, custom clients exist for google drive which can work however you want. We see a constant trend where users move towards products which just work rather than require manuals and configuration. Seems only sane that general public products like google drive should cater to this and if you want full power over everything, you have 3rd party clients, nextcloud, ftp, etc.
- mjw1007 5y ago
  I don't think it's safe to reason from what the "main" objection is. I see one of the comments on that page is: « I just installed the new Google Drive desktop client (Win 10 pro) and the new virtual drive it creates triggers a non-compliance issue with ClearPass OnGuard that my employer requires (because the drive is not encrypted) and thus prevents me from connecting to their VPN. » Maybe this OnGuard thing is being foolish, but that's no comfort to the user.
  - Silhouette 5y ago
    Maybe this OnGuard thing is being foolish Maybe, but if corporate policy requires all storage to be encrypted and the tool to enforce that policy can't verify that whatever Google's software is doing is compliant, maybe not. Different policies might be appropriate for software that is used by non-experts in a personal capacity and software that is part of professionally managed IT systems used for business purposes with regulatory compliance obligations. A lot of the modern trends from the likes of Google, Apple and Microsoft might make sense for the former group but they are a significant concern for the latter and for prosumer or small business users who might want to operate more like the latter but are stuck with software aimed at the former.
- danielheath 5y ago
aclelland 5y ago
I've come to accept that it's just a cost cutting measure for larger tech companies, why offer users an option when you don't need to? It costs extra to document, test and offer support for. I can't really think of any software from a major tech company that I use frequently and that's been updated to give me _more_ toggles to customize the app. It's always to take things away.
- Gigachad 5y ago
  Apple actually does really well at this where it matters. Their accessibility settings allow a huge amount of customization for making the devices easier to use for disabled people. They just don't have android rom style settings like changing the unlock screen to swipe down rather than up or turning the battery indicator in to a circle.
  - dannyw 5y ago
    Configurability matters in a lot more cases than just accessibility. example: set Spotify to be the default music app.
  - atatatat 5y ago
    Or the ability to change your system apps.
- simion314 5y ago
  Exactly. For example on a small company we had one user that needed RTL support, this ment we create backend code to store his perferences, front end code to add UI for it and testing the feature. We implemented because for a small company each user is important where big companies or projects(Firefox,GNOME will force this minorities to go elsewhere)
  - asvitkine 5y ago
    Uhm, there are literally hundreds of millions of people in the world that use RTL languages. For mainstream, global software this is not a niche feature but a core requirement.
thih9 5y ago
I guess companies are more interested in mainstream users than in technical users. The former are a larger group that seems easier to attract and retain, they mostly use defaults and don’t care that much about dark patterns. Google has been following this approach for years now, simplifying the UX in a way that both 1. makes the product easier to use and 2. in a way that benefits Google. Google has merged the url bar and the search bar in chrome, they force defaults on google search, and not long ago [1] we were discussing removing detailed cookie controls. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28407656 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28407656
- usui 5y ago
  I would like to posit the idea that all feature changes target #2 far more than #1: to benefit Google as an org. What if the emphasis of mainstream users is overstated? I find it more likely that an organization could be shaping features to coax its users into submission to make the org's life easier. "Yes, mainstream users want this simplification. No, we can't share the data or methodology in which we surmised this. Yes, this makes our life vastly easier, but we want to excuse it by pinning it on mainstream users." I've seen power apps (so by definition all the users are very technical and should not be patronized) that use the same reason to cut features instead of saying outright that it's too much to support. Maybe for a big org like Google it would be an admission of embarrassment.
antaviana 5y ago
They want to hide complexity and reduce surface of support to make products usable by a much, much larger audience than before. The poweruser needs to die to accomplish this goal.
zmix 5y ago
It's just like in authoritarian politics...
robbedpeter 5y ago
It's lazy and greedy and arrogant. It's catering to the lowest common denominator, pushing users into a cycle of manipulation and constant change, preventing any nuanced use of software, forcing users to increased dependence on a walled garden. It's a dark pattern - don't let people use the software in unexpected ways that might take potential profit away from another service or future feature. If any use gives more value than was intended, that use will be curtailed, then properly monetized elsewhere, or simply (and more often than not) shut off. If combinations of available settings reveal an actual bug, sometimes it's easier to take away the options than to fix the bug. But if it's simply a case that the software is doing things the developers don't want for any of the above reasons, they claim users are too incompetent to be trusted, and that they're removing the option for the good of the user. It's a gross and vapid perverse incentive endemic to FAANG. Good solutions exist for complexity and user configurations, like snapshots, reset to default, and so on. There's no excuse for mature software to lose configurability.
- ljm 5y ago
  Going with Occam's Razor, I think it's really just as simple as product/engineering not making this kind of feature a priority. Plus, we're talking about Google here, so this new desktop version was 99% likely to have been rebuilt as an MVP.
  - nixass 5y ago
    > Plus, we're talking about Google here Exactly the point the referred poster was making. Google does nothing without monetization in mind
    - kettleballroll 5y ago
      As opposed to which other company?
      - tux3 5y ago
        Mozilla? They're not the paragon of virtue I want them to be, but it sure fucking ain't Google. My point is that there are shades and degrees of bad behavior. It's a mistake to handwave every company as equally bad. That feeling is how you normalize horribly immoral things.
yosito 5y ago
> Why are we taking away configuration from users' hands? Because users are the product, not the customers. Time to choose a cloud provider with a different business model.
izacus 5y ago
It's just... easier for engineers. Less to test, less code, less to think about. And right now, all software is being built at the pleasure of the software engineers - this is why you're also seeing shift towards things like Electron apps and less options and worse UX. It's just easier for the guy programming it and noone really cares about user experience because there's no real competition. I mean, what are you going to do, use a 3rd party client for Google's services? You're not allowed to - at least not on the same service level.
- noahadavis 5y ago
  > I mean, what are you going to do, use a 3rd party client for Google's services? You're not allowed to - at least not on the same service level. 3rd party Google Drive clients have been the only type of Google Drive client on Linux for a long time. Probably the only good graphical client is this one and it's actually pretty good: https://www.insynchq.com/ https://www.insynchq.com/

Retric 5y ago

Calling that an upgrade is interesting editorializing, forced downgrade is more like it. This is about as helpful as being forced to add an icon to your desktop, o well easy enough to use other software.

pedro2 5y ago

Google Backup & Sync is being replaced by Google Drive for Desktop, née Google [Drive] File Stream. Unlike Dropbox, where filenames are searchable by name on Everything, here that doesn't seem to happen -- at least the indexing takes more than 15 minutes with UI frozen. An interesting tidbit: Google Filestream allows mounting on a folder. Google Drive for Desktop doesn't support it yet. Another interesting tidbit: the configuration settings in Google Drive for Desktop was migrated to a JSON setting stored on a registry setting (just in case you try following the settings of Google Drive Filestream).

amatic 5y ago
In Everything, try going to options -> folders, and add the google my drive folder. Seems to be working for me
sumedh 5y ago
> Google Backup & Sync is being replaced by Google Drive for Desktop Why does Google have this bad habit of changing product names, they do it with Chat as well.
- deepsun 5y ago
  Promotions.
  - tyingq 5y ago
    I see you're being downvoted, but I do wonder to what degree that might be true. Working on a team that maintains something old isn't terribly glorious. Rename the product, and now you have a "product launch" on your resume.
    - deepsun 5y ago
      My comment wasn't downvoted, it's actually my most upvoted comment on HN.
  - zomglings 5y ago

jpalomaki 5y ago

Could this be the first step to migrate away from the folder sync? So eventually you would have just the virtual drive approach. Not an expert here, but I believe the folder sync is technically more difficult to get right and there’s likely lot of edge cases that give you lots of trouble.

daniel_iversen 5y ago
That seems plausible to me! I know at Dropbox we always spent a lot of time “playing nice” with the operating system while still providing a very deep and seamless integration. So much complexity and working with gnarly and changing APIs.
- ncann 5y ago
  I'm curious, would you be able to describe some of that "playing nice" and the complexity of the API? Sounds like a good story time!
blitzar 5y ago
I am pretty sure this is one of the last steps not first steps. Been using this type of google drive for years now, mounts a virtual drive (with ability to always sync some folders locally + cache of contents). I do miss the idea of my local copy being a backup of the cloud contents, and having to be a bit more thoughtful about syncing up chunks of documents and folders for being disconnected. Given how large the amount of data actually stored is, and how little gets frequently used, it makes life a lot easier.

y4mi 5y ago

I've been using insync for years now. It's an alternative google drive client that also works on Linux. It works really well. I'm not affiliated with them, just a happy customer

morganf 5y ago
I second that love for Insync! And I'm also not affiliated.

2ion 5y ago

It needs to run with elevated privileges in order to do this, right? So into the trash it goes. This is right up there with keyboard and mice configuration software running as daemons with administration privileges.

richardwhiuk 5y ago
No, if you install the app just for the user who is logged in then you don't need elevated permissions to install or upgrade.
- 2ion 5y ago
  So an unprivileged service can map drive letters on Windows?
  - muststopmyths 5y ago
    If the user is mapping a network location they have access to, obviously yes. I'm guessing this thing is probably exposed via WebDAV. edited a bit for clarity.
  - Pathogen-David 5y ago
    Yes. You don't see it often, but drives can be mounted per user session instead of at the system level. The easiest way to see this is to use subst to map a drive and then try to navigate to that drive from a UAC-elevated command line. (You won't see the drive since it exists in a different session.) Mapped network drives and drives shared over remote desktop are other examples of per-user mounts.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jonathanlydall 5y ago

The old one would often cause "this app is preventing Windows from shutting down", which normally would eventually resolve itself, but it was an annoying delay. Hopefully this new one is better in this regard. I was very annoyed at the "upgrade wizard", it felt like of steps and very disruptive. One screen with a few checkboxes should have sufficed, perhaps an optional "advanced" button for those who want it. Relatedly, I got more than one pop-up saying the new version was coming to which I felt "this is really not something you should bother me about before the actual upgrade".

LightG 5y ago

Reason 421 to ditch Google. They have a couple of things I find handy, but wouldn't trust them with my data if they paid for it (and they don't). It's not that I inherently don't trust them with privacy (though why should I?), it's the constant bullsh!t and bait and switch. And even that, I tried to pay them for something the other day (I felt I had to while I considered other options), for the pleasure of paying them, they wanted my passport, utility bill and other details. Erm, nope. They've collectively taken a dive off the deep end. I never felt I'd get to a place where I feel I trust Windows on a laptop more than I trust Google. /endrant

blitzar 5y ago
Funnily enough I trust them to keep my data safe more than pretty much any provider. Safe from everyone except themselves (google) of course, but then I litterally cant think of any provider/person I trust to not read stuff I put on their computer.
- Kaze404 5y ago
  I don't. Just a few hours ago I noticed I started getting a bunch of guitar-related ads (like courses) after searching last night for a list of all the existing Guitar Hero guitars.

aymendjellal 5y ago

The virtual drive also breaks Win32DiskImager Took me forever to understand why it worked on my laptop but not my computer...

xg15 5y ago

Wild guess... but this sounds like the drive letter isn't really a feature but actually an implementation detail leaking through that they are trying to dress up as a feature. At least that would explain their insistence on users hiding the drive instead of removing it. I believe, previously they just had a daemon running on the client PC that synced a local folder with the cloud storage. (Like Dropbox) Now they seem to have switched to some sort of "fuse-but-on-windows" virtual device driver that accesses the cloud storage directly and presents it locally as a virtual drive. (Like OneDrive) Would this make sense?

noisem4ker 5y ago
That's exactly what it is, and what the old Google Drive File Stream was. Reading the comments here and in the linked forums, it seems I'm one of the few used to how Google Drive File Stream worked, and most of the complaints are coming from people more used to the folder-based variant, which has been now shoehorned into the other paradigm.
ncann 5y ago
I think so. I'm totally not familiar with the pros and cons of mounted drives but I assume there are some operations that are possible or easier to do when it's a mounted virtual drive vs a plain folder? Something related to file streaming where you need to detect that a file is accessed on the fly and "stream" it if it's not already available on local disk?

pityJuke 5y ago

In terms of bugs, I'd like to add a particularly interesting one, where for some reason, the latest Google Drive can cause UWP Icons to disappear. Now, this is some odd interaction between Google Drive and Windows, but it is... strange [0]. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/8jx5ym/google_drive_file_stream_causing_uwp_icons_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/8jx5ym/google_dr...

smoldesu 5y ago

If you have a server and like provisioning stuff, do yourself a favor and make a Nextcloud. You can run it off pretty much any hardware made in the past 10 years, and you straight-up don't need to deal with asinine workarounds like this. It's just like the old days, you and a WebDAV folder, as God intended. If you can't set up a server but still want a good sync solution, use Syncthing. It's a decentralized solution that doesn't require a main server, and lets you create incredibly intricate sync solutions.

svnpenn 5y ago

I use Rclone with BackBlaze for a while now, because fuck Google: https://github.com/rclone/rclone https://github.com/rclone/rclone

vmoore 5y ago

Interesting reply: > My solution is install Winaero Tweaker. It's free and very easy to disable the Google Drive letter. https://storage.googleapis.com/support-forums-api/attachment/message-125490210-13101903063865332100.gif https://storage.googleapis.com/support-forums-api/attachment... That looks like a handy tool for tweaking Windows 10. Always loved power-toys like that.

dirtyid 5y ago

Frustration with Google sheninangans turned me into a mainstream user who now accepts defaults and in retrospect, I don't miss a thing. Wonder if this is by design.

tambourine_man 5y ago

Use rclone and be happy. Seriously, I haven't tried Google Drive for Desktop but I won't even bother, given their track record. Rclone is simply amazing, the developers are responsive, it supports every backend on the planet. It's a single lightweight binary written in Go, runs on Linux, Mac, Win, x86 and ARM, every feature you could ever need, thoroughly documented… oh, and open source. I mean, what else could one want?

hamandcheese 5y ago
Looking at the rclone feature set, it’s not clear if it provides a daemon to continuously synchronize a folder. I imagine that this is high up on the list of what “normal users” care about. For power users, though, rclone does look quite nice.
- tambourine_man 5y ago
  It doesn't. But you can set a script to sync it periodically and it allows you to mount any remote as a network drive. But of course, this is HN, a target audience that's generally to be able to use a command line tool and write a simple script. I wouldn't recommend it on a regular users forum.
lostmsu 5y ago
Syncthing is a better alternative.

sally1620 5y ago

Why can't they just do the same as dropbox or onedrive, where they use Windows file system filters on a regular folder (no mount points). To all the people who suggest alternatives, our entire org is run by xooglers and they put everything in Google Drive. I have no choice but to use this crap. To make matters worse, I cannot use any third-party client (or even roll my own) because it is not allowed by the security policy.

anaganisk 5y ago

I was once replied by a google engineer, “We put a lot of thought in things we do, we do whats best for users”. Well every time that arrogance goes wrong I paste this, to reinforce my belief on how google functions.

fiddyschmitt 5y ago

Does anyone know how it implements the virtual drive? I can't see any special drivers so it doesn't appear to be dokan/winfsp/winfuse.