Google Drive for Musicians - Benefits?

[james090]

What’s everyone’s thoughts on using Google Drive for Musicians?

I’ve never used anything like this but am a big Google user

I never liked Dropbox personally so am seriously looking at whether I am missing out on Google Drive for storing projects/samples etc?

I usually work away up and down the country and take a couple of SSD drives with me. There have been times I’ve forgotten something and samples or master tracks that I have to send, have been forgotten or are not with me which is a pain!

I do now only use 1 MacBook Pro M1 so portable and I guess I could save everything internally instead of external drives but would GDrive still be useful ?

How good is Google Drive for things like back ups/current projects etc and what am I missing for the people here that currently use it?

If it works for me I’m willing to pay a higher tier to get the flexibility

[Murray B]

As I needed to have Microsoft Office apps on my MacBook I use their OneDrive which integrates very well with the MacBook Finder App (surprisingly!). It just becomes another file folder and you get around 1TB of storage.

It's been very useful for collaboration and much easier than using a browser based interface to upload / download. For small files you don't even notice it's a cloud based drive, for large files it's all about your internet connection speed.

I don't know if you can do the same with the Google Drive integration in Finder, at the time I was collaborating on a series of tuition films it didn't look like this was possible, but don't take my word for it.

There is a little trap in this of course, which is once you have loads of files on a subscription based cloud, you need to keep paying the subscription or plan on a marathon download and archive process before the subscription runs out

[RichardT]

I use Google Drive to give me instantaneous off site backup. I don't back up everything on my machine, just my music folders. When I render stuff, I do it to an area that is not backed up and only move pre-master and master audio files to the backed up area when they are finalised.

It's not sufficient just to rely on Google Drive, so I also use Time Machine to create local backups of my entire machine. But it's very re-assuring to know that I have off-site copies of everything - multiple off-site copies in fact as Google Drive will replicate and backup data stored there.

[RichardT]

As I needed to have Microsoft Office apps on my MacBook I use their OneDrive which integrates very well with the MacBook Finder App (surprisingly!). It just becomes another file folder and you get around 1TB of storage.

It's been very useful for collaboration and much easier than using a browser based interface to upload / download. For small files you don't even notice it's a cloud based drive, for large files it's all about your internet connection speed.

I don't know if you can do the same with the Google Drive integration in Finder, at the time I was collaborating on a series of tuition films it didn't look like this was possible, but don't take my word for it.

There is a little trap in this of course, which is once you have loads of files on a subscription based cloud, you need to keep paying the subscription or plan on a marathon download and archive process before the subscription runs out

The way I have it set up is that I have defined a folder in Finder that is synced automatically via Google backup to Google drive, so as soon as a file is changed (provided the backup is switched on) it is copied to the cloud. So it’s completely transparent.

[James Perrett]

I use the 200GB tier mainly for sending and receiving files. On the PC it uses a virtual drive to access your files which works very transparently over my 4G internet link. I like the fact that you can start small and expand rather than start with 2TB for £80 per year which seems to be the smallest option offered by the alternatives.

I also found Dropbox extremely annoying - if someone shares a file with you it uses up some of your storage allowance (or it did when I tried it). Google's approach has always made sense to me.

[Philbo King]

I use it prinarily to send mixes to my golden-eared friend for critiques. It works very well for that.

[james090]

Thank you all. This is interesting

As some of you mention, I also found Dropbox completely backwards and annoying and everything I use currently is google so the backup drive would be good.

Do the different tiers add any storage to your Gmail also? (A bit off topic I know)

So if you back up, Ableton sessions, masters, samples etc to Google drive, and then delete them from your Mac. I guess it’s just a case of re downloading them to your Mac to resend to someone (or does it go direct from the cloud?) And also download to work on a project again in a DAW?

(Sorry for the dumb question as I’m new to cloud backup and stupidly only use physical hard drives!)

[RichardT]

I don’t use it to restore things I’ve deleted - it does have a bin where it stores deleted stuff, but I use Time Machine backups to restore stuff instead. You might be able to use Google Drive for this but I’ve not tried it.

[james090]

I don’t use it to restore things I’ve deleted - it does have a bin where it stores deleted stuff, but I use Time Machine backups to restore stuff instead. You might be able to use Google Drive for this but I’ve not tried it.

Sorry my fault, when I said delete from Mac, I meant after uploading to Google Drive.

If I wanted to work on them again I guess it’s just a case of downloading them from the google cloud, you can’t stream them from the google drive as if it’s a physical one, can you?

[RichardT]

My advice would be not to use the same folders on Google drive for real time backup as for retaining files you no longer want or have room for on your computer. If you're going to do that, create two separate drives.

[Folderol]

Please keep in mind that 'Cloud' = someone else's computer (and in an unknown location).
This can be blocked/switched off at any time without notice. Considering the comparatively low cost, along with the portability and reliability of backup drives these days, is it really worth the risk?

[RichardT]

Please keep in mind that 'Cloud' = someone else's computer (and in an unknown location).
This can be blocked/switched off at any time without notice. Considering the comparatively low cost, along with the portability and reliability of backup drives these days, is it really worth the risk?

I think it can be helpful to have both - the cloud services for off-site, plus local backups for security.

[James Perrett]

Please keep in mind that 'Cloud' = someone else's computer (and in an unknown location).
This can be blocked/switched off at any time without notice.

If you are paying for it then they'd be in breach of contract if they switched it off. Google have been around for something like 25 years and offer a broad range of services so they're unlikely to disappear anytime soon.

However, I don't use it as my only backup - I keep at least 2 copies myself too.

[James Perrett]

Do the different tiers add any storage to your Gmail also? (A bit off topic I know)

So if you back up, Ableton sessions, masters, samples etc to Google drive, and then delete them from your Mac. I guess it’s just a case of re downloading them to your Mac to resend to someone (or does it go direct from the cloud?) And also download to work on a project again in a DAW?

The space is shared across all of the Google services that you use. So you could have 30GB of email, 50GB of shared files and 20GB of photos as part of your 100GB allowance if you go for the lowest paid tier.

If you want to send a file to someone just get Google to give you a link and then your collaborator can access the file direct from the cloud. You can choose whether they have write access or just read access.

On Windows the drive looks just like a network connected drive so, in theory, it may be possible to work direct from the cloud but I've not tried it.