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As long-time readers might know I have a Google account. I have a YouTube channel and a Google Drive repository that I use to share files. What they don't know is that I also back up things to that Google Drive storage, namely files being used in NaNoWriMo. I run Google Drive every two or three days during November to sync the files so that if something catastrophic happens locally I have a back-up copy.
I also back-up locally. This will become very relevant soon.
So the problems with Google Drive began when the program began ignoring its own "start Google Drive" on boot-up setting. I have it turned off because having sync enabled all the time creates its own list of headaches. An update in the last few months created a situation where the box is UNchecked in options in Google Drive but the Windows registry entries to enable it are set so the program runs on start-up. Thus I have to launch AutoRuns and disable it there... and repeat that every time Google Drive updates because not only is that option reset but the update also creates new registry entries, each program version having its own folder with associated drivers that are then registered.
Thanks, Google.
Today however I went to run it and got an error message saying I needed to download an update from Google's main site. I did so and found the program has been changed so that the local files folder has a new name. This led to it redownloading everything from the server and duping all my files. You think deleting all the extra stuff was easy? No! Of course not! I used the browser tools to try to do just that and it chucked everything into Trash, except it didn't do that and only a tiny fraction of the files were there to be flushed by the Empty Trash button.
Except even that didn't actually work and I had to click on Storage then clear up space then Trash then delete and... it still didn't delete everything in there. It said it did but while trying to deal with all the stuff that didn't get sent to Trash I cycled around to the Trash folder in drive again and wouldn't you know it but the system said there were a bunch of files in there that didn't get deleted. So I hit delete all and it said it deleted that stuff but it didn't. I went back to Storage and clean up and yadda yadda yadda where I found out two things:
The 'Delete All' button will bring up a pop-up that has an accurate number of all the files in that category and asks you if you're sure if you want to delete them because it's permanent. If you check the box that says you understand then click delete (yes, two clicks) you get a pop-up saying hurray they're deleted and you saved X amount of space. That pop-up is a lie because ONLY the files that were visibly listed on screen when you hit 'Delete All' are actually deleted. The second thing I learned is that you can check the 'Showing' box to select all files currently displayed and then hit Delete and it will remove those. This function however has a hard limit of 100 files at a time.
It displays 32 when you first load it. Scrolling to the bottom and clicking 'show more' loads another 32. There is no way to get exactly 100 files listed at a time. You can only get up to 96. I'd just like to mention that at this point (that is when I've got this mostly sorted out) my Drive folder is sitting at over 6k files. Duped it would be 12k files but some files I noticed were in quadruplicate. Let's see, I'll be generous and assume half the files were tossed by this point so only 6k. Divide that by 96 and... I've only got to go through the multi-click deletion process a minimum of 62 times if I go that route.
Oh and stuff in Trash (or whatever that nebulous region that is the state of not being accessible in the Drive but not being seen by Drive's Trash folder could be called) is counted against your Storage cap. I have never been anywhere near that but given recent shenanigans over file count limits I don't exactly trust Google's managing of the service. On a related note the service recently had a problem where it lost a bunch of user data. Can't say I am the least bit surprised. Google Drive is now set in Streaming Files mode by default so yay TWO things I have to check every time I run the program to make sure it hasn't switched itself to settings I don't want. Here I thought Windows had cornered the market on being as annoying as possible by resetting things on update.
And this stuff is why change for the sake of change, whether it be Drive or YouTube ends up being a huge pain in the ass for users on top of creating an environment doomed to devolve into spaghetti code. I do not envy the engineers/programmers who have to unclog that muck.
I also back-up locally. This will become very relevant soon.
So the problems with Google Drive began when the program began ignoring its own "start Google Drive" on boot-up setting. I have it turned off because having sync enabled all the time creates its own list of headaches. An update in the last few months created a situation where the box is UNchecked in options in Google Drive but the Windows registry entries to enable it are set so the program runs on start-up. Thus I have to launch AutoRuns and disable it there... and repeat that every time Google Drive updates because not only is that option reset but the update also creates new registry entries, each program version having its own folder with associated drivers that are then registered.
Thanks, Google.
Today however I went to run it and got an error message saying I needed to download an update from Google's main site. I did so and found the program has been changed so that the local files folder has a new name. This led to it redownloading everything from the server and duping all my files. You think deleting all the extra stuff was easy? No! Of course not! I used the browser tools to try to do just that and it chucked everything into Trash, except it didn't do that and only a tiny fraction of the files were there to be flushed by the Empty Trash button.
Except even that didn't actually work and I had to click on Storage then clear up space then Trash then delete and... it still didn't delete everything in there. It said it did but while trying to deal with all the stuff that didn't get sent to Trash I cycled around to the Trash folder in drive again and wouldn't you know it but the system said there were a bunch of files in there that didn't get deleted. So I hit delete all and it said it deleted that stuff but it didn't. I went back to Storage and clean up and yadda yadda yadda where I found out two things:
The 'Delete All' button will bring up a pop-up that has an accurate number of all the files in that category and asks you if you're sure if you want to delete them because it's permanent. If you check the box that says you understand then click delete (yes, two clicks) you get a pop-up saying hurray they're deleted and you saved X amount of space. That pop-up is a lie because ONLY the files that were visibly listed on screen when you hit 'Delete All' are actually deleted. The second thing I learned is that you can check the 'Showing' box to select all files currently displayed and then hit Delete and it will remove those. This function however has a hard limit of 100 files at a time.
It displays 32 when you first load it. Scrolling to the bottom and clicking 'show more' loads another 32. There is no way to get exactly 100 files listed at a time. You can only get up to 96. I'd just like to mention that at this point (that is when I've got this mostly sorted out) my Drive folder is sitting at over 6k files. Duped it would be 12k files but some files I noticed were in quadruplicate. Let's see, I'll be generous and assume half the files were tossed by this point so only 6k. Divide that by 96 and... I've only got to go through the multi-click deletion process a minimum of 62 times if I go that route.
Oh and stuff in Trash (or whatever that nebulous region that is the state of not being accessible in the Drive but not being seen by Drive's Trash folder could be called) is counted against your Storage cap. I have never been anywhere near that but given recent shenanigans over file count limits I don't exactly trust Google's managing of the service. On a related note the service recently had a problem where it lost a bunch of user data. Can't say I am the least bit surprised. Google Drive is now set in Streaming Files mode by default so yay TWO things I have to check every time I run the program to make sure it hasn't switched itself to settings I don't want. Here I thought Windows had cornered the market on being as annoying as possible by resetting things on update.
And this stuff is why change for the sake of change, whether it be Drive or YouTube ends up being a huge pain in the ass for users on top of creating an environment doomed to devolve into spaghetti code. I do not envy the engineers/programmers who have to unclog that muck.
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