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I have used Google Drive for backups for a while now (yes...I do encrypt certain files locally). I was in the situation where I had plenty of local storage and just moved my Google Drive directory onto my storage drive.

I have recently changed to a laptop with only 256GB of local storage and have a NAS with plenty of space. I obviously do not have the local storage to effectively use Google Drive and NEED it installed on the NAS. I have tried symlinks and directly putting the Drive directory on the NAS...both failed (it seems symlinks and network drives are not supported). I have also attempted in a VMware Fusion created Windows 8 VM map a shared directory to a drive letter and Google Drive it still failed for the same reason as the OS X network location.

Any ideas on how to get my Google Drive directory on the NAS? I did at one point put a VM on the NAS itself which effectively puts the storage on the NAS, but the performance was as expected...horrible. If I could possibly "trick" Windows or OS X into thinking that a certain directory was local it would work, but I do not know how to do this.

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  • possible duplicate of Can I sync network folder with a Google drive?, also see Change local Google Drive folder
    – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007
    Jul 22, 2014 at 17:06
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    Did you even look at the question you linked? They are not asking the same thing at all..at least it wasnt answered like the question he asked. They responded with LOCAL drive answers. Google Drive was new then
    – user348898
    Jul 22, 2014 at 17:08
  • "I would like to sync a folder that resides on a network-mapped drive" - is this NOT what you're asking?
    – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007
    Jul 22, 2014 at 17:09
  • "Select any folder you want, including network shares and mapped network drives." is positively a lie. He clearly had not even attempted to use Google Drive because it does not support network drives. That is why I need to "trick" the OS into seeing a network drive as a local drive.
    – user348898
    Jul 22, 2014 at 17:12
  • It doesn't make it a different question. If you'd like better/newer/updated answers to the existing question, please earn a bit of rep and post a bounty (and some comments) on the existing question.
    – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007
    Jul 22, 2014 at 17:16

3 Answers 3

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Insync is a Google Drive client that allows you to use a networked drive for your Google Drive sync: https://www.insynchq.com/

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So I stumbled upon this question while looking for something else, but having a NAS myself I figured I could assist in some way. I understand this question is old, however, maybe by providing a solid answer or alternative solution this may help others who come across this topic.

So the way I see it you can go in two different directions to obtain what you want. Basically:

  1. Find a 3rd Party Software to SYNC your Google Drive to the NAS;
  2. Use a 3rd party Software to REPLACE your Google Drive, and use only your NAS as a personal cloud;

Option 01 - 3rd Party to SYNC your NAS to your Google Drive

For this, you need to first: check with your NAS provider if they do not already have a solution to your situation. A simple example would be Synology and their "Cloud Sync" package, which allows to sync a lot of 3rd party clouds to the NAS directly.

In case you are using an Open Source based NAS, like FreeNAS, you could use the included Cloud Credentials to sync your cloud to the NAS. Here is a great tutorial on how to do this: YouTube Video.

Option 02 - 3rd Party to REPLACE your Google Drive with your NAS

Now along with the solution to sync your Google Drive to your NAS, most likely the NAS manufacturer will offer their own sync software solution for you to use to sync files between your NAS and computer directly. Another Synology example (yes, I have one) would be "Drive". It completely replaces OneDrive, Google Drive or Dropbox with the advantage that you are using your NAS as storage. So instead of monthly fees, just by bigger hard drives and you are set.

The great part about option 02 is that you are not limited to the application provided by the NAS manufacturer. You can easily use other just as fantastic applications that do that, such as:

  1. Syncthing: https://syncthing.net/
  2. Resilio: https://www.resilio.com/individuals/
  3. OwnCloud: https://owncloud.com/

There some advantages for using one application over the other, hence you have to analyze your requirements and see which would fit for you.

You can also install platforms such as NextCloud which provides a full set of tools for productivity and collaboration (syncing of files included).

In any case I hope this helps.

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I am in the same boat, where I don't want to eat up my internal HD space but still want to have some redundancy for my Google Drive account.

I am pretty sure I have found a working solution. I'll also run down the things I have tried that didn't work so that people can be spared the time to try these things.

I have a Drobo and have some shares mapped as windows drive letters. Several months back, I set the share permissions to "Everyone" on the Drobo dashboard, and I was able to set that share's mapped drive as the Google Drive root folder in the past.

HOWEVER, something happened with an update somewhere and it stopped working. I kept getting the message that the folder is not writable. I was clearly able to write to the folder through explorer. I tried connecting to the share as Administrator and then running sync as an administrator. That didn't work either, so I concluded that it wasn't a permissions problem, but perhaps Google updated the sync program to flat out reject UNC paths. But I tried some permissions tweaks anyways...

I tried going into the folder properties through explorer and changing the ownership, and setting permissions to full control. Windows couldn't do it.

I tried changing the credentials that windows uses to map the drive. Nothing worked there. I tried using different ways to try and fool the sync program into thinking it was not a UNC path. Nothing worked there. (subst, mklink) It kept seeing the UNC path through the mask.

I tried creating a VHDX on the share, and then mapping it to a folder on my C drive. That seemed to work but Sync kept crashing. ( \drobo\share\GDrive.VHDX -> c:\GDrive\ )

Then I tried mapping the VHDX directly to a drive letter. That seemed to work, but sync was getting hung up on the System Volume Information and Recycle folders. ( \drobo\share\GDrive.VHDX -> G:\ )

SO... I created a folder, on the root of the VHDX that is mapped to a drive letter. I set that folder to the Sync folder. It has now synced 3249 files and 2GB without a hiccup. I have a TB of data to download, so (fingers crossed) I am feeling confident that this solution works. I will update the answer if I discover any issues with this. ( \drobo\share\GDrive.VHDX -> G:\ ) THEN created a GDrive folder on G:\ and then selected G:\GDrive\ in the Sync application.

HTH

Edited to add: I also tried InSync, but for a terabyte of data in 100's of thousands of small files, downloading 2 files at a time would take WEEKS.

I also tried ExpanDrive, and although I was able to map a drive letter directly to Google Drive, it was a very slow connection and still left me with the need to set up some sort of sync between the mapped cloud and my NAS. When I tried using CrashPlan to back up from the mapped Cloud, it couldn't see the drive letter that ExpanDrive had mounted. So I gave up on that.

As an added bonus, mapping the VHDX to a drive letter makes thumbnails work in explorer even though they are in a network location. Woohoo!

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