Google Drive not syncing properly

[Big Jim]

I keep getting an issue where I edit a file on one PC and save to google drive, then go to open the file on another PC and google drive (Backup and sync) hasn't sync'ed fully yet and I end up saving over the updated version with what is essentially an older file.
This is particularly annoying on one excel file I am editing which has a macro running that saves it automatically on exit.

This has happened a few times and I have had to go to google drive online and restore the correct version.

It happened today on a PC that had been on a good 5/10 minutes before I tried opening any of my google drive files up, and had to go an recover the correct version (which was stored in google drive)

another annoyance is that I delete files on one pc and sync software from another PC puts them back.


Is this typical behaviour from google drive ?
is one drive any better ?

 

[Sky-Knight]

Yes this is normal, the fix is to stop doing what you're dong.

Drive sync software is not instant... ever... And it's definitely not to be used to replicate a central shared file set.

Onedrive is NOT better in this regard, however Sharepoint IS. If your working dataset is in Teams, it's in sharepoint, and saves happen direct to the cloud, and you could have both machines in the same file at the same time working on it live together and be just fine. Onedrive is involved in this process, but it's not the only moving part. Sharepoint is acting as a versioning system at this level, and is in a place to resolve the sync conflicts gracefully. This is probably the most valuable part of M365 services I've ever used. It's fundamental, and it's huge.

 

[Big Jim]

Yes this is normal, the fix is to stop doing what you're dong.

Drive sync software is not instant... ever... And it's definitely not to be used to replicate a central shared file set.

Onedrive is NOT better in this regard, however Sharepoint IS. If your working dataset is in Teams, it's in sharepoint, and saves happen direct to the cloud, and you could have both machines in the same file at the same time working on it live together and be just fine. Onedrive is involved in this process, but it's not the only moving part. Sharepoint is acting as a versioning system at this level, and is in a place to resolve the sync conflicts gracefully. This is probably the most valuable part of M365 services I've ever used. It's fundamental, and it's huge.

Cool,

Haven't had to use this before, but have been working from multiple locations/machines recently so I threw the files I needed in to my Google drive folder to make things easier/quicker.

I thought this software was a constant/instant backup, its always backing up/ transferring something normally if I have a file open.

 

[Sky-Knight]

@Big Jim, No it moves the file once it's saved. So there's a time delay for upload.

 

[Diggs]

Google Drive Stream is for instant access across multiple computers or users.

 

[HCHTech]

Google Drive Stream is for instant access

Here is their comparison of the two features.