Google Drive

[ITtech35]

Hi

 

I want to deploy google drive across the network so users have their work auto downloaded at home / school. We currently have roaming profiles, but with redirected desktop / documents etc. What I want is to redirect google drive to userarea\google drive> I can find where to manually do this but can't find where the setting is in the reg or program file?

 

Any ideas?

 

Thanks

[jtoland]

Hi within our school i have also done this and i have had to share there folders manually. we did have a problem at one point where i disconnected google drive because it was not syncing and could not reconnect it to the path it was before

[Arthur]

It's going to be tricky to redirect the folder since Google doesn't officially support network volumes for Drive and the path appears to be stored in a SQLite database called sync_config.db in %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Google\Drive (along with lots of other user specific settings).

 

Google Drive for Mac/PC supports only HFS+ (on OS X) and NTFS (on Windows) file systems. There is currently no support for network volumes (e.g. SMB or NFS) or other file systems such as FAT32.

 

 

The only workaround I can think of is to create a CorrectFilePaths shim using Microsoft's Application Compatibility Toolkit and/or deploy the MSI and let end users configure Drive.

Edited October 8, 2014 by Arthur

[CrazyGitar]

Well, I'm throwing this out there, seeing as there's not been a solution posted that I can see (anywhere on the internet). What I've got is very much a workaround, not a real solution to the issue, and is prone to problems.

 

The issue with roaming profiles is that the folder 'Drive' in the '%LocalAppData%\Google' folder is disappearing at logoff, due to existing on the local PC, not the roaming profile itself. To fix this, I made a script that copies the data at logoff, and then another that copies it back at logon. Technically, you just need to copy it the once, as it retains the correct settings.

 

Log off script:

 

net use x: "\\$ServerName$\$Share$\%Username%"

rmdir "X:\GoogleDriveSettings"

xcopy /s /y /i "%LocalAppData%\Google" "X:\GoogleDriveSettings"

net use x: /delete

 

This creates the X: drive, which is where we want to save things. For me, this works for each individual user in a group, where all of their profiles are in the same shared directory, so no need for a script per person!

 

Within the X: drive is the 'GoogleDriveSettings' folder that will store everything. It then copies everything in the local Google folder to GoogleDriveSettings.

 

Log on script

 

remdir "%LocalAppData%\Google"

net use x: "\\$ServerName$\$ShareName$\%Username%"

xcopy /s /y /i "X:\GoogleDriveSettings" "%LocalAppData%\Google"

net use x: /delete

 

This copies the opposite direction, taking everything out of GoogleDriveSettings and putting it in the local Google folder. In testing, this occurs well before Google Drive itself starts up.

 

I hope that helps, just remember to edit the script for your server and share, save as a .bat file and set logon script to happen at logon, and logoff script at logoff. If anyone has an easier way to do the same as above, let me know. I pretty much just .bat files alone for moving files around like this.