Cloud storage is the best way to backup your important data and files. Even if your system crashes your data is still safe allowing you to access and recover it at anytime. Along with Dropbox, Google Drive is one of the most widely used service.
Consider a scenario:
You are working in a group along with your team constantly accessing and modifying certain file. You always want others to have the latest version of the file with updated content. What if you find out that the changes you made are not synced? Google Drive application does not provide an option to trigger a manual file sync instead it does it automatically.
If you find that your files were outdated by days, what would you do to sync them or always have them in sync. Here is an app that I came up with to address this issue.
Force Google Drive to Sync Files and Keep them Updated
Meet Google Drive Force Sync, a tiny app which helps you keep your Drive content always in sync by forcing manual updates periodically.
How it Works?
As of now Google Drive app doesn’t have any option to force file sync manually. But there is one behavior of the app which we can use it to our advantage. Each time drive application is opened it scans for new files it has missed out to sync. So our app will be automating this, it will be restarting gDrive application every 5 minutes and hence triggering file sync and keeping contents as fresh as possible.
How to Install and Use the App?
1. Download and rename file extension(Press F2) from .abc to .exe. Then run Google Drive Force Sync.exe
2. That’s it. Now on, every five minute Google Drive app will be restarted automatically.
3. To terminate this app, right click it from task bar and click exit.
Note: Google Drive application should be installed only in default location under Program Files for this to work. Otherwise you will get an invalid path error message.
Tips and Suggestions:
1. Pausing and resuming sync sometime helps in forcing updates.
2. If there are files which are still not synced at all, you can right click on Google Drive icon on task bar-> select view unsyncable files and then click retry all.
So did it work for you? Have better suggestions? Feel free to share it with us!
Credits: This app is inspired by tip from binarybum
Great article on Google drive. Sir can I able to use Google drive as my html website host. If possible please post a new article on your site.
Thanks! Yes it’s possible. Will let you know how.
Hi, I like your little app. Is there a way I can change it to every 30mins? I have about 74gb on Google drive and it doesn’t get through scanning it all before it restarts. Thanks.
Thanks! That would require code tweak. You can write to admin@techawakening.org for support. Cheers 🙂
Hi, I like the idea of your app because I have been having sync issues for a week or two and haven’t been able to find a solution. My only problem is when I don’t seem to have a programme that is able to open it?
Can you tell me what I should use please?
Thanks
You’re Welcome. Once downloaded did you change the extension from .abc to .exe?
How does one do that? I tried F2 and nothing happens…
Its installed but nothing happens…sync has not resumed.
Is the Drive app being auto restarted?
What happens if the googledrivesync is still synchronizing files when the 5min elapses and your app goes to restart the google processes?
Shawn
It will probably start over or start from where it was left. If your files are huge, taking time to sync, I can tweak the polling time for you. Write to admin@techawakening.org
I love the app. I have a batch file that calls for GoogleDriveForceSync.exe to start before accessing the drive to do backups to my GoogleDrive. This way I know I have a fully synced set of files. But (it was bound to come), once I run it, I get a leftover GoggleDrive icons in the Windows 10 System area of the task bar every 5 minutes. I can get rid of them (many time up to 50) by floating the mouse over the icons (I don’t even have to click on them for them to go away; but they do mount up. How do I prevent these from collecting on the system icons of the task bar?
Thanks. But I think I did push a fix once just to address this very same issue. Let me cross check again.
same problem here….
Hi, While a solid idea it doesn’t work for me, since the sync frequency is such that it kills cover notes (to go along with a link) which I am writing using the Google Drive Share facility. How do I uninstall this? (I could not find it in the obvious place.) Thnx.
It’s just a stand alone .exe file. Go ahead and delete that file alone 🙂
yeah.always face this kind of problem when the document not sync ..thank for the solution..
Thanks. Please spread the word!
Thanks thanks thanks. Let me get this straight. You found a major error in a leading product from a billion dollar firm and you fixed it. WOw. I am retired, my hobby is a computer network I set up of 19 computers, laptops and towers. When the miscreants at Dropbox told me they were dropping support of XP (shortly after they dropped support of my Mac OS 4.11) I looked for another platform and with great reluctance added GDRIVE to all 19 machines. Yes that took a while, but, as I said, retired. Today I used it for the first time and it did not sync. (Dropbox, in spite of the intriusive updates, always synced.) So faced with the thought of 19 un-installs I went to the web version thinking I would manually upload that way and see what happens. Google refused to allow my Firefox browser — which I have about 6 versions of, 1 installed and 5 portables — to touch their GDRIVE. That is a new level of MEAN and they could have mentioned this in the install. So I was back to the 19 un-installs when I found your app and OMG it works! Anyway I owe you one.
Hi Pop,
Great to know. This certainly made my day 😉 And please do share and spread the word across. And you can always buy me a coffee: http://techawakening.org/go/donate
This is a great idea. Google-drive has many issues. But this blows up Windows-10 Store apps, when running in ‘tablet-mode’. Every 5-mins it would crash a metro-app I was running. I don’t think it happens in normal mode.
Give us a chance to change the frequency. I’m a fraid i had to turn it off. It was too much. I was seeing the “black command box”.
Great tool. Sometimes it takes my Gdrive more than 2 days to sync things, and that’s ridiculous. I am thinking of quitting Gdrive then came across this article and it really helps. Thanks for providing this.
Please ignore previous comment. I figured out I had to view in a folder in order to be able to change the name and the good news is that it works! Thank you so much!
I came across this tool and it works well but it would be great if you could disable the auto sync every five minutes (or adjust this time period would be great) and found an option to suspend hot keys – I don’t see anything telling what the hot keys are. I would rather see an option to:
1. Be able to set your own auto sync time
2. Have it just check the date and times and not sync unless the dates and times changed on the google side or PC side
3. Be able to shut off the autosync and a way (even right clicking for that option) to manually sync it.
Thanks for the tool and your willingness to make changes to it.
Thanks for your feedback!
Awesome program, thank you for your hard work. One issue is I get a lot of leftover google drive icons in my taskbar. They go away with a mouse hover, but it seems I get one for every sync. So after half a day I may have 50+ of these.
Fix coming up soon.
Hi, now that Drive is going away, does this work with Backup and Sync ?
Thanks
Worked for me, though since I use 64bit Windows7, I had to copy the files googledrivesync.exe & googledrivesync64.dll from C:\Program Files\Google\Drive –to–> C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Drive.
cheers
It seems by Backup and sync is installing under “c:\program files and not c:\Program files (x86). This is a server 2012 server. I keep getting the error when trying to install. Is there anyway around this. Backup and sync doesn’t ask me for the path on the install. Thanks,
Just copy, paste the folder content on to c:\Program files (x86)
Pausing and resuming does not seem to force sync. There should really be a “sync again” button or similar!
Hoping this will fix my age-old problems with syncing. Only issue is that I download things directly to my desktop. you mentioned the download must be to original location in Program Files, I’ve tried every place and I continue to get the error. Any tips?