Cloud update

Look, my main priority here is just making sure the work I've busted my tail on doesn't vanish into thin air. I’ve had a hard drive die on me once before—thank god some IT guys at a local firm managed to pull it back from the brink—but hey, that's why you save things to other drives, right? And one of those options is the cloud.
I’m working at a school, and we students have access to Microsoft 365, which includes Google Drive (the cloud side of things). Now, moving files from my computer up there isn't exactly rocket science, but the real headache starts when I actually edit or update a file. How do I swap out the old versions for the new ones? Obviously, the filenames stay the same. So, how do I push those updates up to Bill Gates's cloud? If I try to sync everything once a month by just dragging the whole folder over, the cloud doesn't seem to realize that certain files have been tweaked—it just looks at them and decides the outdated version is fine where it is. One "fix" is to just wipe everything in the cloud and re-upload the entire folder from scratch. But man, that takes forever. Even if I could find an option like "skip or replace duplicate filename"—which I haven't found yet—selecting "replace" ends up doing the exact same thing: re-copying the whole damn folder.
What’s the smartest way to handle this? I tried using sync once, but it turned my computer into a total snail. Is there a way to just swap out the specific files I’ve messed with and upload any brand-new ones? Basically, I just want to update the state of the cloud so it matches my computer perfectly without wasting half my life doing it.

Since you’ve got Microsoft 365, you basically have everything you need. Looking at how you're currently handling things, I'd say you're making this way more complicated than it actually needs to be.
Look, there are really just two ways to play this.

The first way—keep all your files on your Google Drive for business. When you want to tweak a document, just hit "open in App." That'll launch your file from Google Drive directly into something like Word on your computer, where you can edit away. Plus, if you toggle on the auto-save feature in Microsoft Office, every single change you make syncs right back to Google Drive automatically. No more stressing about whether you actually hit save or not. And hey, if you accidentally mess something up, "version history" lets you roll back to an earlier version of the file whenever you want.
I use this method for work every single day and it works like a charm. You don't need to go around deleting or moving files like you mentioned.
Even if you do end up deleting something from Google Drive for business, there's a Google Drive Recycle Bin where you can just grab it back.

The second way is to use the Google Drive app on your PC (which you already have built into Windows 10). You just sign in with your Microsoft 365 credentials and pick a folder on your hard drive to host everything.
In that setup, you're working locally on your machine, and the changes just upload and sync up to the Google Drive cloud in the background.

Thanks for the reply!

But honestly, that first method feels way too risky to me—why on earth would I put everything on someone else's dime? Why should I rely entirely on Bill Gates? I’d much rather have my own hardware be my primary option. What if I get locked out because of some password issue, or what if he decides to hike up the prices, or heaven forbid, the whole service just crashes... I don't know, I just don't like having all my eggs in someone else's basket...
I want my local drive to be my go-to, with cloud backups acting as the safety net.
The second way you suggested just drags my computer's performance through the mud...

It's the same deal with my external hard drive—I keep a backup on there that I update every once in a while, but I haven't really nailed down a solid workflow yet. Right now, I just wipe the slate clean and copy everything over from my PC again...

Since you already have an external drive sitting there, I’d suggest looking into some of those free backup utilities and getting everything backed up to that drive.

Most decent backup software—the good ones, anyway—only saves the specific files that have changed since your last run, so it isn't constantly rewriting everything. You can even set it to trigger automatically at some time when you aren't actually sitting at your computer... and honestly (unless your PC is a total piece of junk), it shouldn't cause any significant slowdowns at all.

I messed around with that software, but honestly, I couldn't quite wrap my head around it. I’ll give it another shot later.
It absolutely drags my system to a halt whenever it's synced to the cloud—just constant uploading killing my bandwidth. No issues at all when I use an external drive, though.
It blows my mind that Bill Gates hasn't engineered software that actually recognizes when a file has been modified (like, check the timestamp, people!) instead of just seeing the same filename and assuming nothing changed.
And don't even get me started on the sheer amount of grunt work involved when you're organizing data on a hard drive—moving stuff into different folders, setting up subdirectories, all that jazz. When you go to sync those changes to a backup drive, it should just be a simple move operation, right? Moving files is way faster than re-uploading everything from scratch. But no, the computer gets totally confused during the update process and fails to take the path of least resistance. It feels like no software has actually mastered that level of logic yet...

How are you guys handling this? What’s your go-to for keeping your data safe?

So, are you basically glued to your PC 24/7?

If you aren't the type who enjoys manually dragging files and folders around the hard drive—which, honestly, sounds like a nightmare—you can just let the system handle the backup overnight while you sleep... then everyone stays happy.

Nicholas King said:So, what, you basically live at your desk 24/7?

If you’re the type who spends way too much time shuffling files and folders around your drive, just let the software handle the backup overnight—problem solved, everyone's happy.

I don't get it. When I talk about moving stuff, I mean it as a way of organizing things—you know, cleaning house. Every once in a while, maybe once every few years, you decide to reorganize your whole drive structure, and honestly, it can be a massive headache. My point was about updating everything after that move. I'm not even sure if a backup program is smart enough to recognize those changes and mirror them onto your external drive or the cloud.

Basically, you’re looking at two main ways to handle backups: incremental versus full.

With an incremental backup—which I suppose is the more efficient route—the software compares what’s currently on your backup drive against what’s sitting on your local hard drive, and then it only grabs the files that are new or have been modified (it essentially checks the timestamps for any files sharing the same name). Now, there’s a bit of a catch here regarding how you handle files that exist on your backup but have been deleted from your main drive. You can choose to either keep them or wipe them out entirely. If you opt to keep them, a moved folder will technically exist in both its old location and its new one on the backup—which, in the long run, means you're going to be eating up way more space on that backup drive than you actually need. On the flip side, if you set it to delete those files from the destination, you run the risk of a situation where you accidentally delete something on your computer and the backup program immediately wipes it from the backup too. Quite a dilemma, really.

A full backup, however, just copies everything from your drive to the backup regardless of whether those files are already sitting there.

The most important takeaway here—and I mean this sincerely—is that neither of these methods requires you to sit there and watch it happen. You just set the backup task, let it run, and go about your business—whether that's getting some sleep, taking a walk, or whatever else you feel like doing.

So, depending on how much space you have on your backup drive and your own specific habits, you just configure the task once and then you're good to go.

I couldn't find it in whatever app I was running at the time—it just vanished on me.
So, what kind of (free) backup software are you actually recommending?

I've used https://freefilesync.org/ before, and it works pretty well. You just set up what needs backing up, and later on, it only syncs the files you've actually changed...

Thanks! I'll give it a shot.

Drew Allen77 said:I’ve messed around with https://freefilesync.org/ before—it’s decent enough. You just tell it what needs backing up and then it only syncs the files you actually changed later on.

This tool is actually pretty solid! Thanks for sharing. It’s clean and easy to wrap your head around.
But honestly? I don't think any software out there—no matter how fancy—can truly handle someone who treats their folder structure like a game of Tetris. If you're constantly renaming stuff, dragging folders into other folders, moving files around, or just nuking entire directories... good luck. I highly doubt there's an app alive that can actually track all that madness without tripping over itself. Usually, they just end up keeping those "deleted" files sitting on your backup drive forever, eating up space because the software thinks they're still supposed to be there.

Why not?

That’s exactly what those kinds of programs are designed for...

Drew Allen77 said:Why not?

That’s basically the whole point of these kinds of programs, isn't it?

So, what option are you actually looking for—something that mirrors the original source perfectly without wasting any time?
Honestly, I'm thinking your only real move is to just wipe everything and clone the original drive from scratch. I highly doubt the software is smart enough to realize it's looking at the exact same file with a different name—it probably won't skip the copy process, so you'll just end up burning time for nothing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRJ8...ature=youtu.be

frozenpuma87 said:So, which option should you pick if you want an exact replica of the original source as fast as possible?
I honestly think your only bet is to wipe everything and just re-copy that first drive from scratch. I highly doubt the app will be smart enough to realize it's actually the same file with a different name and skip the heavy lifting. It'll probably just waste time copying it all over again.

Go with Mirror or Mirroring (depending on your language settings)
If you're looking to sync data across a local network, this is hands down the best tool out there. It’s been supporting Google Drive for a while now too, on top of the standard SFTP and FTP options. (By the way, if anyone at the office needs syncing on older machines running Windows 98 or Windows XP, I’d definitely recommend Allways Sync Pro)
But, when you're dealing with Microsoft OneDrive and cloud syncing, you really need different software designed to handle various Cloud services and mirror mode—think stuff like 2BrightSparks SyncBackPro, GoodSync, or Syncovery)
🙂