How to Auto Sync Local Folder to Google Drive: 2 Easy Ways

Quick Guide

• Can I Automatically Sync Folder to Google Drive?

• Why Sync Folder to Google Drive?

• How to Automatically Sync Computer Folder to Google Drive

• Tips about Access and Protect Folders in Google Drive

Can I Automatically Sync Folder to Google Drive?

Why Sync Folder to Google Drive?

There must be many important folders containing a large number of files like photos, documents, videos, etc. on our computer that you may want to make a copy of your data for security. As we all know, Google Drive is an advanced online storage service that can keep your data safe and far away from your location. What’s more, it offers a generous 15 GB free storage space which is enough for storing your important folders.

Therefore, you may want to sync your important folders to Google Drive for safekeeping. Given this is a long-term project, you must want to sync them to Google Drive automatically to save both time and effort. If you don’t know how to sync a folder to Google Drive, please read on.

How to Automatically Sync Computer Folder to Google Drive

To automatically sync the folder to Google Drive, you need to rely on some effective tools. Google releases a desktop sync tool called Drive for desktop to help you sync folder with Google Drive efficiently. Besides Google Drive's official tool, you can also try some free third-party tools to let Google Drive sync folders automatically and easily. Learn how to use these tools in the following content.

Way 1. Sync via Google Drive Official Desktop App

Drive for desktop is Google Drive’s official desktop app for Windows and Mac, which offers two functionalities - sync and stream files and has a lot of advantages. You can easily take an online backup of selected folders or files on your computer without your intervention. Let's see how to sync folder with Google Drive:

Step 1. On your computer, download and install Google Drive for desktop.

Step 2. Open Drive for desktop, click Sign in with browser to connect your Google Account that you use for Google Drive.

Step 3. Under the My Computer tab, click Add folder to select any folders you want to back up.

Step 4. You will be asked to choose if you Sync with Google Drive or Back up to Google Photos ( choose Sync with Google Drive only). You can choose to sync entire drive with your computer or sync specific folders on Google Drive with this computer. After selection. Click Done.

Step 5. Then on the next screen, click Save to make sure the current folder is automatically synced to Google Drive.

After setting up Drive for desktop on your computer, it will create a Google Drive disk on your computer to store the contents from Drive. You can see the Google Drive disk in Windows Explorer and add files or folders to this disk to let Google Drive auto-sync the folder to the cloud. If you have multiple computers, you can also sync multiple computers with Drive for desktop.

Way 2. Sync Folder to Google Drive automatically via a Third-Party Tool

Another way to achieve Google Drive folder sync automatically is by using a third-party tool. You can choose a free cloud sync service like CBackup, which is a professional cloud backup and sync platform for Windows PCs. With CBackup, you can sync files or folders to Google Drive automatically and easily.

It also supports useful sync settings, like schedule sync, email notification, and file filter to improve your sync and backup efficiency.

And it uses an incremental sync method for you to sync the changed part automatically since your last sync, speeding up your sync and saving time.

It supports many mainstream cloud drives including Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, etc. As long as you add these cloud drives to your CBackup service, you can backup or sync files to these clouds.

And besides syncing files to cloud, it also supports other useful features, like PC cloud backup, cloud to cloud backup, cloud to cloud sync, etc.

Here is how to automatically sync folders to Google Drive via CBackup:

Step 1. Please download CBackup, install, and launch it. Then sign up for a free CBackup account and sign in to CBackup desktop app.

Step 2. Click the My Storage tab on the left, then choose Google Drive and click Authorize Now, then follow the steps to grant access to CBackup.

Step 3. Click Sync > Sync PC to Public Cloud to create a new backup task.

Step 4. Then select the folders that you want to sync to Google Drive in Source, and select a Google Drive folder as the destination.

Step 5. Press Settings > Scheduler > check the option "Set a Sync schedule for automated Sync", then choose One time only, Daily, Weekly, or Monthly, click OK, Then press Start Sync to auto sync folder to Google Drive.

Note: There are two other features you could configure in Settings at the bottom left corner:
✍ Email Notification: it will notify you of the sync result after the sync task is finished if you are not in front of the computer.
✍ File Filter: it allows you to exclude the file types you don't want to sync to cloud drive. Besides, you could only backup file types you like or sync all file types.

2 Manual Ways to Sync Folders to Google Drive

Apart from the automatic way to sync folder to Google Drive, there are two ways for you to manually sync files to Drive, one is uploading files to Google Drive using the Google website, another is using the Google Drive folder.

Way 1. Using Google Drive Webpage

1. Please log in to your Google Drive account, then click the + New button, then choose Folder upload in the dropdown menu.

2. Select the folders that you want to sync to Google Drive, and hit Upload.

Now, your folders will be uploaded to Google Drive easily, this way could spend you a lot of time if there are many folders to upload.

Way 2. Drag and Drop Folders to Google Drive Folder

1. Drag and drop the folders that you want to sync to Google Drive folder on your computer.

2. Wait for a while, it will automatically sync folders to Google Drive.

This way can help you sync folders outside the Google Drive folder with a manual way.

Tips about Access and Protect Folders in Google Drive

Tip 1. How to Access PC Files and Folders on Google Drive

You can access the folders that you backed up to through the Google Drive website. To make it easier for you to identify the PC folder and the local Google Drive folder, they are stored in a separate section of Google Drive. You can find them under the "Computer" section.

Step 1. Go to the website of Google Drive and sign in to your Google account.

Step 2. Find the Computer option in the menu on the left.  You can find the local folder you have uploaded under this section.

Tip 2. How to Protect Files and Folders on Google Drive

Actually, the files in Google Drive are not absolutely safe, so, to avoid losing files both on local and Google Drive, you’d better make one more Google Drive backups. You can sync Google Drive files to another cloud storage directly with CBackup.

Let’s see how to protect your Google Drive files to OneDrive for example with CBackup:

Step 1. Please sign in to CBackup desktop app with your CBackup account.

Step 2. Click “+ Add Cloud” under the “My Storage” tab, select your clouds (here are Google Drive and OneDrive), and click “Add”. Then follow the steps to authorize CBackup to access and manage your files on the cloud.

Step 3. Click on the “Backup” tab on the left, then, click the “Backup Public Cloud to Public Cloud” button.

Step 4. Tick Google Drive as the source and choose OneDrive as the destination, then click “Start Backup” in the lower right corner to sync files from Google Drive to OneDrive.

As mentioned above, CBackup also offers a secure CBackup Cloud, which provides 10GB free cloud storage, and offers 1024GB (1TB) or 5120GB (5TB) of CBackup Cloud at a reasonable price. CBackup allows you to get more Google Drive free cloud storage space by combining multiple google drive accounts if your Google Drive storage is full. And it can combine different cloud drives as well.

Conclusion

According to the contents above, you can use Google Drive for desktop tool to automatically sync folder to Google Drive. But sometimes, Drive for desktop may stop working for unknown reasons. If you meet this situation, you can use a Google Drive for desktop alternative like CBackup to sync files from local to Google Drive. Or, you can just take advantage of the CBackup to protect your files in Google Drive.