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I am shifting my files to a new Mac, including my Google Drive folder.

I could just set up Gdrive on the new computer and let it sync with my Google Drive folder on the cloud, but this will take many hours or days and chew up internet quota.

I would rather set up my Gdrive account to the new computer, copy my existing Gdrive folder to the new computer, and any minor discrepancies are synced up.

Does anyone have experience of this working?

I am aiming to avoid duplicate files being synced back up when I do the copy. Dropbox seems to work fine albeit with a bunch of reindexing.

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  • The Google Drive folder behaves just like an ordinary folder, so manually copying to it should work. What problem are you experiencing?
    – harrymc
    Feb 24, 2014 at 8:47

6 Answers 6

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Here is the idea. You can just disconnect it from windows machine and do the next mentioned steps in your MAC.

When you download Google Drive to your PC a default folder will be created in C:\Users[your name]\Google Drive. If you want to change the name or location of this folder you can do so by following the steps below. This tip is useful if you need the Google Drive folder to have a standard url for all your company - for 3rd party apps for example.

Click on the Google Drive icon in your system tray (usually bottom right of your Windows task bar) Choose Preferences Choose Disconnect account, your Drive will be disconnected but your files will stay on your PC Click on the Google Drive icon again Sign in when asked, step through the set up until you reach screen 2 of 2 - then click Advanced setup Click Change to choose the folder name and location - if you choose an existing folder it must be empty Your files will now be re-synced down to your PC in this new location Delete the old folder and files - if you want to.

Copied from http://gappstips.com/docs-tips/view/106/change-the-google-drive-default-folder

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    Worked like a charm. I was able to move my Google Drive directory from one SSD to the other and point Google Drive to the new location after signing back in. Worked great! Nov 16, 2014 at 0:17
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To my experience, it works just like Dropbox. Go ahead and paste all the documents to some folder in your new computer, direct the shared directory to wherever that folder is, and Google Drive should do the rest. Make sure you leave all the files on your new computer alone, as you might disrupt the syncing if you do so.

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Try this.

Install drive on mac before copying folder from Windows. Let it make the drive folder itself. As soon as drive is installed and starts to sync, disconnect Mac from internet and copy files from Windows PC.

Connect mac to internet again after finishing copying. it'll only use little data to verify all the files and will continue to sync normally afterwards.

Let me know if this fails.

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This works...

Install drive on mac before copying folder from Windows. Let it make the drive folder itself. As soon as drive is installed and starts to sync, disconnect Mac from internet and copy files from Windows PC.

Connect mac to internet again after finishing copying. it'll only use little data to verify all the files and will continue to sync normally afterwards.

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God, this was painful (finding the right procedure!) I concur with the comments above from nenad and brian724080.

(This worked on my new Windows laptop): Install Google Backup & Sync. Don't select anything to backup, just let it create an empty Google Drive folder. Let Backup & Sync start downloading files from the cloud (I let it download all of the empty folders.) Pause sync. Transfer files to the Google Drive folder (should have the exact same file structure). Restart sync...instead of downloading files, it will now just sync the files.

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Agree, this works seamlessly...

Install drive on mac before copying folder from Windows. Let it make the drive folder itself. As soon as drive is installed and starts to sync, disconnect Mac from internet and copy files from Windows PC.

Connect mac to internet again after finishing copying. it'll only use little data to verify all the files and will continue to sync normally afterwards.

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