Please ask your questions here (not in email) – we promise to respond here, no such promise with email. This is a benefit of membership. Here’s info on how to post to this Q&A Forum.
You must be logged in as a Premium Member to Ask the Geeks a question. All are welcome to freely browse the Forums.


12:43 am

July 29, 2018

I am sorry if this is in the wrong place. It is the best that I could do. I have so many questions that I can’t begin to ask them all so I will only give you the basics here. I have a couple of lap tops and a desktop. I tried to install backup and sync on my desktop today. In the preferences menu I checked only photos to backup. B and S started syncing everything on my computer. Before I knew it all 14.7 GB of my allotted 15 were filled and syncing stopped. I have no desire to backup all documents etc. I went into my Google Drive to start to get rid of all of the items that were now there. No matter how many of the hundreds to thousands of items added to Drive that I removed, both on the desktop and laptops, it still says that I have used 14.7 GB and I am danger of losing my access to Gmail. How can I get rid of all of the documents and music that are now in drive that I don’t want there and so that I can free up space? Is there a way of choosing to remove all docs and music from Drive with one click without removing them from the computer also? Why do I have pictures in google drive when they should be in google photos? I did check high quality. If necessary can I just remove the backup and sync app altogether and will that empty my drive so that I can assure access to my gmail? I realize that all of this may be rather confusing and you may not be able to provide enough help in this forum. If not maybe there is an alternative fashion of providing me the help I need on a fee basis. Let me know. Thanks for any help that you are able to provide now.
Yikes
Let’s see, where to start. First of all, did you watch this video: 500. Backup and Sync
As I see it we have 2 issues right now:
- How to free up space in Google Drive – to give you back your Google account storage allotment
- Figure out why files other than pictures got uploaded.
To free up space – yes, you can go into Google Drive using a web browser and delete everything there you don’t need backed up. It will not remove the same files from the computer as long as you have this Backup and Sync option checked correctly. Where it asks about “Removing items synced between Google Drive and this PC” Set it to never remove. Click on image below to see screenshot.
Once you’ve checked that setting, then go to Drive.Google.Com under Computers, find the erroneously uploaded folders and delete them. I recommend starting small and checking that they are not being removed from your computer. Once you’re sure, you can right-click on a folder and delete it all at once. See screenshot below.
Now for the second part. I wonder you you somehow got into the Google Drive part of Backup and Sync. You should not be syncing Google Drive – see the box to uncheck in the screenshot below.
Let me know if this helps. If you need more, perhaps we can arrange a Zoom screen-sharing call.
1 Guest(s)
