Drive File Stream launching to all G Suite customers | Hacker News Reader

Drive File Stream launching to all G Suite customers

gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com

70 pointsjnlasher65 comments

To be clear, they are depreciating the Google Drive desktop application and replacing it with the Backup and Sync desktop desktop application which performs the same function.

Said another way, the new version of Google Drive is called Backup and Sync.

The way some of the comments in this thread are written they are ending their Google Drive cloud storage.

Are they auto-updating everyone? How is this not being understood as a product rename with extra features?

Summary: Google Drive desktop application is being deprecated.

For personal accounts, use Backup and Sync [1] which has selective sync, auto photos import to Google photos, and can backup the entire computer.

For corporate/G-Suite, use Drive File Stream [2] which gives fast on-demand access to personal and team drives, downloading files only when you access them.

1. https://www.google.com/drive/download/

2. https://support.google.com/drive/answer/7329379

The problem with this is that Drive File Stream is not available except as an EAP (Early Adopter Programme) which you can apply for but are given no guarantee or timeframe re access, afaik.

This means any migration to Google Team Drives (their Dropbox service for GSuite business) results in all staff losing all access to local file sync.

(And this is particularly a problem for non-Gsuite-Friendly file types like Pages, Keynote & too-complicated-for-Google-Sheets xlsx files which need to be downloaded, edited, renamed and re-uploaded.)

Not cool.

Please read the article again:

> Note—these settings won’t go into effect for your users until Tuesday, September 26th, when Drive File Stream becomes generally available.

I find it weird that Google doesn't release linux version, considering that majority of their employees seem to use linux (Goobuntu to be precise)? There's even a rumor that they have such an app for internal usage, so why not share it with the world?

What are the major differences between Goobuntu and Ubuntu, from which I assume Google's distro is derived?

From Wikipedia: "Goobuntu is a Linux distribution, based on the 'long term support' versions of Ubuntu, that is internally used, as of 2010, by almost 10,000 of Google's employees. It adds a number of packages for in-house use, including security features and disables the installation of some applications, but is otherwise similar."

Misleading title and some people have already taken the bait. This isn't s deprecation of Drive. It's a depredation of the Drive desktop sync implementation, being replaced with an on-demand desktop integration.

Trust people with a chip on their shoulder against Google jumping at any chance to get angry about them though.

Not even that. If you prefer the old behavior, there is a Backup and Sync client that does the same thing. This is just Google's competitor to Dropbox Project Infinite.

Exactly, though Google isn't itself really clear in its docs, and there's some sneaky/creepy stuff apparently turned on like sharing to the cloud every USB stick and SD card you plug in by default [which Google Drive did not do: beware when upgrading to B&S]. That's going to be a whole "WiFi snooping secret data" saga all over again if my interpretation is correct.

http://www.earth.org.uk/note-on-backup-energy-efficiency.htm...

[Edit to make clearer that B&S has an apparently new worrying behaviour unannounced if you do a straight upgrade from GD.]

It sounds like it backs up photos from USB sticks and SD cards by default, which is probably expected behavior for people who use digital cameras that connect via USB or write to SD card. Does it also back up non-photo files from those devices?

That wasn't clear.

But it's going to end up sucking up a bunch of private photos even if restricted to that (kids, wild parties, whatever).

If not, think how many businesses exchange moderately- to very- sensitive documents privately in person, if too private to put on-line? Hmm, USB sticks...

Anyhow, I hope you're right. Have you found documentation to that effect?

I mean, it won't do anything unless you install it, and if you install a file sync tool you'd better know what it does. I hope that's clear from the landing page, though.

Note though that if you were like me already running GD and upgrade to B&S (as you would have to by Dec 11 to keep the functionality) there is no warning of this new slurping.

You can turn it off completely in Preferences.

If you notice that it's there and that it's on.

Which I didn't immediately.

It's tucked away at the end and without a checkbox like other items in the same view. Indeed, it looks at first glance to be informational.

Someone in the UX team may have thought that they were being clever, but like the W10 'cancel means upgrade' debacle, it'll cause trouble.

I do hope that this is just unfortunate design and that USB item is only enabled if the checkbox above it is on also. Perhaps I'm just having a bad hair day: I don't normally do conspiracy theories.

Thank you. Every article or comment I've seen regarding this has been "omg Google is eating all my files!!!".

I know Google bashing has been super popular lately, but the amount of toxicity is getting exhausting.

We've just reverted the editorialized title of “GSuite Drive File Stream Deprecates Google Drive” to that of the article.

>Misleading title and some people have already taken the bait.

Curious why you say it's misleading? The title is 'Drive File Stream launching to all G Suite customers' which doesn't say anything more than a new feature or app is coming to ALL G Suite customers.

Not misleading or click bait. I don't know why you think that cause knee-jerks reactions like that also don't help.

The previous title was "GSuite Drive File Stream Deprecates Google Drive", which is absolutely leaving out a large part of the context

It's not very clear. Is this only for G Suite / business customers or will regular @gmail.com users be able to use File Stream too?

> Available to all G Suite editions

Sounds like only to G-Suit customers, maybe they expand to everyone at a later date.

I just checked my free (grandfathered) GSuite account and there is no option for it (yet?).

That's right. Grandfathered "Google Apps Basic" accounts get the regular Backup and Sync that @gmail.com accounts get.

A shame, but understandable. :)

Non G Suite customers can continue using the Google Drive app, it's just renamed to Backup and Sync: https://www.google.com/drive/download/

" Say goodbye to time-consuming file syncing and any concerns about disk space. With Drive File Stream, all your files are always ready for you and your colleagues."

Say hello to having no files when you are not connected to the network?

[work at Google, not on Drive File Stream, have been dogfooding it for a while now]

Drive File Stream caches your files so recently accessed files remain available, and you can also explicitly mark/select files to make available offline.

I don't like this trend at all. I want to know where my files are. IDrive on Apple does a similar thing and it totally messed up my backups.

Some people really want this feature (OneDrive used to do it), and some people really want the opposite.

The consumer tool (Backup & Sync) syncs everything locally (or you can sync specific folders). FileStream is meant for GSuite (business customers) that may have a LOT of files in their drive and don't want to sync everything.

If you want true offline copies, you can use Drive Backup and Sync which does effectively what it did before.

I've actually been using drive file stream in pre-release form for a couple of months (without and significant glitches or complaints). Offline access is still present. It's actually dead easy to sync a subset of your folders ... much easier, in my opinion, than selective syncing in the deprecated desktop application.

I hear reports of Google shutting down people's accounts with no recourse to get it open again. They have no way to access their emails or files and no way to speak to a human at Google.

File Stream no longer downloads all of your files... Does that mean that if I use Drive File Stream and Google shuts down my account, then I'm just screwed?

Yes.

The issue you describe most commonly happens to free (Gmail) accounts. Drive File Stream is only available for GSuite customers, and even those still have the option to continue using Backup and Sync (which is the Google Drive replacement for free accounts, and keeps syncing all files).

I just switched to B&S (to migrate to a new laptop): R(estore) is missing! I have to manually download my backup, and manually move files back to their original location!

This is a weird backup tool.

Here are the steps for restore (although they can be terse)

1. Install Backup and Sync on new computer

2. Add an empty folder "Temp" to backup

3. Let the folder be backed up so that a Computers > My New Computer > TEMP is created on the cloud.

4. Go to cloud and move the top level folders in Computers > My Old Computer > Documents/Downloads/etc into Computers > My New Computer

5. Create empty folders with the same name on the new computer.

6. Add them each in the Preferences. In version 3.36+, the application will recognize that it exists in the cloud. It will then tell the user it will merge the folders.

7. Uncheck the TEMP folder you added

8. Click Apply

All your content will be downloaded.

Does it support U2F at all? I can't seem to find a mention of it..

We're looking into forbidding anything but U2F (best/most secure two-factor method -- decreases phishing effectiveness) so any of the other/backup methods wouldn't work to sign them in.

Google has supported u2f for sign in for a long time.

Yes, but does this desktop application? I recall that their old sync client unfortunately did not support U2F

I'll try to test this out and post-back, but I can confirm that the pre-release version supports the app-based push/confirm version of 2FA. Not a guarantee, but I'm assuming that U2F will work seamlessly.

I believe there is also some basic support for policies regarding re-authentication, though I'll have to get back on this one too.

"With this launch, Google Drive for Mac/PC is officially deprecated." - as long as they're continue to work on the Linux client its all good-

While I guess Google isn't technically deprecating Drive, the very confusion introduced by them and this announcement is still not good.

Why couldn't they have just used the same name, and upgrade the software?

Why was there this horribly confusing announcement with EOL dates only 6 months in the future?

Because Google marketing takes product naming classes from Microsoft. :)

> Why couldn't they have just used the same name, and upgrade the software?

Because they had an online service/web app (Drive), a mobile app (also called Drive) and a desktop app (also called Drive) which were related but all had different features, and now the web and mobile apps keep the name, but they have an organizational desktop app (File Stream) and a personal desktop app (Backup and Sync) that are distinct. Sure, one or both of the two desktop apps could have kept the Drive name, but that actually would have been more confused.

I have one of the old free Google apps accounts. Now I wonder which sync app I should use.

You could try https://www.insynchq.com/

I bought a license for this after having a series of problems with the Google Drive app, which was quite buggy and unreliable on syncing. Problems went away as soon as I switched to InSync, and it has been rocksolid for over a year and a half. It's definitely worth the cost of the license.

This is just for people using that thing integrated to their Windows machines.

File stream is a Kernel module reimplementing NFS or Samba? Or they are killing standard FS access achieved via Rsync and are trying to position a webapp bundled in chrome its place?

The following (linked from the tool's about page) will provide you with a good idea of the underlying technology: https://support.google.com/drive/answer/1716931. In a nutshell, you're mounting your drives via FUSE to gain a interface and on-demand streaming and the option for offline access. Google has wrapped quite a few niceties around the native file interface (Finder/Explorer), and I imagine that there are more to come (e.g., integration with native indexing/search).

So, according to that page it uses Dokany on Windows and FUSE on MacOS.

Except that i keep receiving "Drive File Stream is not enabled for this account" error even after I enabled it and signed up for the early access program.

I don't get the rage here.

This is awesome news -- this type of functionality could save a big enterprise like mine millions of dollars, plus the benefits of search!

Any news/tips on how to synchronize pictures/files from a headless Linux NAS box to Google photos/drive?

You could try https://www.experts-exchange.com/articles/29279/Backup-Linux... or Duplicity which will work on headless setups.

If I only use the Drive web app, how does this affect me?

It does not.

Doesn't MS One Drive do that for ages now?

They did. Then they removed the "on demand smart files" features and it hasn't existed for nearly a year or more. They are adding it back again in October 2017 as part of Windows 10 Fall Creators Updates.

And now I am very glad that I never used Google Drive for much of anything. I never had a good gut feeling about drive in general and especially after I read about a man who lost a year's worth of stuff with no recourse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6612854

Unless you know someone on the board of Alphabet, there is no reason to use Google software for anything important.

Not to say that there aren't valid reasons to think twice about relying exclusively on Google, but the title is slightly misleading in that Google isn't really deprecating Google Drive with no replacement, but rather introducing both Backup and Sync, which behaves like Google Drive (plus some new features), and Drive File Stream, which behaves more like a network drive.

Drive isn't shutting down. The older desktop app is deprecated, replaced by Drive Backup and Sync and adding a new product which is effectively a network filesystem built on top of Drive.

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