Disclaimer: I have been searching this and other sites for previous answers, and always find questions/answers related to syncing multiple accounts to a PC via the Google Drive software. My concern is simply about sharing files between different accounts without bringing the PC into consideration - only as a form of cloud backup.
The closest post I have found is this one, but while it formulates my question pretty well, the answers given still revolve around syncing to a PC and the use of the Drive software, and how it can be abusive to have simultaneous Google accounts syncing at once from one PC.
Problem: What I would like to know is whether I can own several google accounts which all share their storage Drives with one central account, and whether this is considered 'abusing' the system. After all, shared folders only use up the storage quota of the original folder owner. Namely, any personal experiences from anyone with a similar setup would be very useful.
I'm not asking just out of nitpickery, I'm legitimately interested (read 'paranoid') about a secondary form of backing up a large-ish amount of information - say around 150 GB, 10 times the quota for free accounts - other than physical drives (which would be my primary form of backup).
As for why bother having multiple Google accounts instead of just paying for upgraded storage for one account, consider the remote possibility of losing access to said account - by spreading the ownership of data among several accounts, there would be a marginally lower chance of losing everything. Plus, if all accounts share data among themselves, any particular one can access everything at once.
Note how this method does not require simultaneous logins, nor does it put a strain on file syncing, therefore in theory it should not be considered abusive.
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1 Answer
Often times questions like this one are very opinionated and open to subjectivity; albeit, it can be approached objectively through pragmatism. Your question focuses on Google Drive, so I shall not bother with other online backup alternatives. I am not responsible for your loss of data or security issues if you follow my suggestion, it is up to you to make up your mind on what is best to you, this is entirely a suggestion. I'm not affiliated with Google and as such unfamiliar with their terms and policies to a perfect extent, it is up to you the consumer to know their terms and policies, even if I portray them badly.
I believe dealing with multiple accounts by divvying up the storage load, is too much of hassle in managing a filesystem to direct multiple storage allocations to different accounts, which would actually be against Gmail's Terms of Use (see below) as abuse - this may cross apply to any and all Google Accounts. It's also a hassle managing different accounts and passwords, so I don't believe that would be very fun at all and would not be very practical.
Perhaps you can do the upgraded storage for a single account, but share all files and folders with secondary accounts of yours (perhaps 1 or 3 accounts max), such that if you lose the primary account you can at least access all your files and download them. However, if you choose this you have more doorways into your file folders which creates a security risk (so perhaps on non-primary accounts you would set it to read or view only so they can still be downloaded but kept unchanged and non-deleted).
In my opinion, the chances of losing access to a Google account is very minimal, if you have sufficient security precautions. For your Google account with an upgraded, you should have two-step authentication (for security purposes) and you should link the account with multiple backup emails (ones you trust) and multiple phone numbers (again ones you trust). As long as you have access, you should be able to change these phone numbers and email addresses; so whenever, you expect a change to these, change them before they become unavailable to regain access. With such precautions, I doubt that your account will become unrecoverable or inaccessible.
Since you claim it is most or about 150GB, it may be wise to have another local backup - just as another safety step, because that is relatively small.
From Google's Purchase, cancellation, & refund policies
If you use Gmail and the auto-renewal fails, your storage plan will be extended for seven days and you'll have seven days to update your payment information. Anewish ac1200 driver download. You can use those extra seven days to clear space in your account or buy a new storage plan.
If your storage plan is canceled or expires
If you cancel your storage plan or when your storage plan expires, your storage limits will reset to the free levels for each product at the end of your billing cycle. Everything in Google Drive, Google Photos, and Gmail will still be accessible, but you won't be able to create or add anything new over the free storage limit. If you reach or exceed the free storage limit:
Google Drive: You won't be able to sync or upload new files, and syncing between your Google Drive folder and My Drive will stop. You'll still be able to create Google documents since they don't take up any storage space.
Google Photos: You'll only be able to upload new photos and videos stored at High quality.
Gmail: Incoming messages to your account will be returned to the sender.
I would assume there would be a time-limit to this before they are like 'You have 300TB and you have the free plan after years of expiration.' They would probably hold the right to delete the storage (though I can't find the policy), which then they would likely try to have you pay (or maybe not) for a window of time to download all your data before they delete it all.
From Google's Gmail Policies (It says 'Gmail Account' which is likely synonymous with 'Google Account' thus 'Gmail account limitations' are 'Google account limitations') answering your question about abuse (while not explicit if this applies to Google Drive) - do not do it!:
The Creation and Use of Multiple Gmail Accounts
Don’t create or use multiple accounts to abuse Google policies, bypass Gmail account limitations, circumvent filters, or otherwise subvert restrictions placed on your account
From Google's Inactive Account Manager settings (as of this writing) you have many options if you set it:
If these are not set the default is nine months (or so it used to be, I can't find the policy on it anymore). If your account does become inactive, Google seemingly claims they hold the right to terminate and do whatever with (which I'd assume is synonymous with delete) your account and all its contents.
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Setting up Google Drive will give you access to cloud-based storage for Macs, PCs, iOS, and Android devices.
Google Drive allows you to store and share data between your various devices as well as letting friends and coworkers access information you designated for sharing.
Once you install it on your Mac, Google Drive appears to be just another folder. You can copy data to it, organize it with subfolders, and delete items from it. Any item you place in the Google Drive folder is copied to Google’s cloud storage system, allowing you to access the data from any supported device.
Using Google Drive
Google Drive is well integrated with other Google services, including Google Docs, the cloud-based suite of tools that includes Google Docs, a word processor, Google Sheets, an online spreadsheet, and Google Slides, a cloud-based presentation app.
Google Drive offers to convert documents you store in Google Drive to their Google Doc equivalents, but you don't have to make the conversion. You can tell Google to keep its paws off your docs; thankfully, this is the default setting.
There are other cloud-based storage systems you may want to consider, including Apple’s iCloud Drive, Microsoft's OneDrive, and Dropbox. All offer some usable form of cloud-based storage for Mac users. In this article, we're going to concentrate on Google Drive.
Requirements to Set Up Google Drive on Your Mac
How to Install Google Drive
The following instructions assume you haven't installed Google Drive in the past.
First Time Startup of Google Drive
The first time you start Google Drive, you have to go through a few steps to get it set up. After that, accessing Google drive is simple.
The installer finishes by adding a menu bar item, and finally, by creating the Google Drive folder under your home directory. The installer also adds a Google Drive sidebar item to the Finder.
Using Google Drive on Your Mac
The heart of working with Google Drive is the Google Drive folder, where you can store items you wish to save to the Google cloud, as well as share with others you designate. While the Google Drive folder is where you'll spend a great deal of your time, it's the Menu bar item that will let you exercise control over your Google Drive.
Google Drive Menu Bar Item
The menu bar item gives you quick access to the Google Drive folder located on your Mac; it also includes a link to open Google Drive in your browser. It also displays recent documents you have added or updated and tells you if the syncing to the cloud has completed.
Perhaps more important than the status info and drive links in the Google Drive menu bar item is the access to additional settings.
Your Mac now has additional storage available in Google’s cloud to use as you wish. However, one of the best uses of any Cloud-based storage system is to link the storage to multiple devices, for easy access to synced files from all of your devices: Macs, iPads, iPhones, Windows, and Android platforms. So, be sure to install Google Drive on any device you own or have control over.
Working on multiple Google Drive accounts on the browser is very simple. Once can simply use the Google account switcher and work on multiple accounts in parallel. Unfortunately, when using the Windows application for the same, there is no such feature.
IMPORTANT UPDATE: This is an old post and many people recently started reporting in the comments that this method no longer works because the Google Drive app was updated to exclude this feature. Hence we’ve written another post that uses a different method. Here it is ->How to Use and Sync More Than One Google Drive Account on Windows.
According to Google Support, once must use application preferences and sign out from the first Google account before using another. But that’s not a solution if you want to sync more than one account and use them in parallel.
Fret not, like always, we’ve got your back. Here’s a method to get it done and run multiple Google Drive instances on the same machine.
Multiple Google Drive InstancesMultiple Google Drives On Mac
Step 1: Close all instances of Google Drive running on your computer and then download and install this application. After the application is installed, add C:Program Files (x86)GoogleDrive to your Windows Environment Variable. You can refer to this article to see how it’s done.
Step 2: Having done that, open Notepad and copy paste the following line. Don’t forget to replace username@ domain.com with your Google username.
@ECHO OFF
SET USERNAME=username@ domain.com SET USERPROFILE=%~dp0%USERNAME% SET USERPROFILE=%~dp0%USERNAME% MD “%USERPROFILE%AppDataRoaming”>nul MD “%USERPROFILE%AppDataLocalApplication Data”>nul MD “%USERPROFILE%Application Data”>nul MD “%USERPROFILE%Local SettingsApplication Data”>nul MD “%USERPROFILE%My Documents”>nul MD “%USERPROFILE%Documents”>nul START googledrivesync
Save the file as Account 1.bat to your desktop or another folder where you would like to sync the files. Don’t forget to select All Files as type in Notepad while saving the batch file.
Step 3: Now run the batch file and wait for another instance of Google Drive to Start. The second instance of the application will ask you to sign in to a new account. Proceed normally, just remember to change the sync folder to the new folder that’s created using the batch files in the advanced option.
Note: Sometimes you might encounter some difficulty while changing the folder. In such a case, copy the exact path of the folder to select the directory.
That’s all, you will now see two instances of Google Drive syncing side by side. Amazing, right? The next time you want to sync files on the secondary account, run the batch file of that particular account. To add every subsequent account, just make a new batch file, run it and configure the application.
Conclusion
As we are not using any third-party application for the trick, this is the best method to sync multiple Google Drive accounts in Windows according to me. However, I think this is one of the very basic feature that should be provided as a built-in feature by Google. What do you think?
Thanks TumaGonx Zakkum for the heads up!
Also See#google drive #synchronization
Did You Know
Gmail supports both POP and IMAP.
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Like many people, I've got 2 Google accounts and I use Drive on both of them for personal & work use. Problem is that the Drive app for Mac does not provide sync options for multiple accounts, so I have to log into 1 account and sync, then disconnect from that and log into the another. I feel like this is a problem that should have been solved back in like 2007. I could probably tolerate signing in/out of each account to sync, but I also keep my Drive folders on an external hard drive so each time I sign in I also have reset my target folder before syncing. Ain't nobody got time for that!
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Anyway, searching for a workaround to this I found 2 options. Option 1 is an app called InSync. I tried it, it worked great, but in order to support multiple accounts they want $25/year. No thanks. Option 2 is this: http://blog.myitcv.org.uk/2015/03/28/connect-multiple-google-drive-accounts-to-o ne-mac-os-x-user.html
The article is over a year old and 2 OS ago, so I'm curious if it would work still on Sierra. Or does anyone know of another solution for this? I can't believe that this is really this complicated.
iMac (21.5-inch Mid 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.4)
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