Google Drive for Musicians - Benefits?

All about the tools and techniques involved in capturing sound, in the studio or on location.

Moderator: Moderators

Google Drive for Musicians - Benefits?

Post by 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
james090
Regular
Posts: 379 Joined: Tue Aug 01, 2017 8:15 am

Re: Google Drive for Musicians - Benefits?

Post by 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 :D
User avatar
Murray B
Regular
Posts: 390 Joined: Mon Nov 28, 2011 12:00 am Location: Staffordshire

Re: Google Drive for Musicians - Benefits?

Post by 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
Jedi Poster
Posts: 4076 Joined: Fri Aug 13, 2004 12:00 am Location: Ireland

Re: Google Drive for Musicians - Benefits?

Post by RichardT »

Murray B wrote: Sun Jun 19, 2022 9:48 am 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 :D

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.
RichardT
Jedi Poster
Posts: 4076 Joined: Fri Aug 13, 2004 12:00 am Location: Ireland

Re: Google Drive for Musicians - Benefits?

Post by 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.
User avatar
James Perrett
Moderator
Posts: 14250 Joined: Mon Sep 10, 2001 12:00 am Location: The wilds of Hampshire
JRP Music - Audio Mastering and Restoration. JRP Music Facebook Page

Re: Google Drive for Musicians - Benefits?

Post by Philbo King »

I use it prinarily to send mixes to my golden-eared friend for critiques. It works very well for that.
Philbo King
Regular
Posts: 218 Joined: Thu Oct 11, 2018 10:07 pm

Re: Google Drive for Musicians - Benefits?

Post by 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!)
james090
Regular
Posts: 379 Joined: Tue Aug 01, 2017 8:15 am

Re: Google Drive for Musicians - Benefits?

Post by 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.
RichardT
Jedi Poster
Posts: 4076 Joined: Fri Aug 13, 2004 12:00 am Location: Ireland

Re: Google Drive for Musicians - Benefits?

Post by james090 »

RichardT wrote: Sat Jun 25, 2022 8:51 am 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?
james090
Regular
Posts: 379 Joined: Tue Aug 01, 2017 8:15 am

Re: Google Drive for Musicians - Benefits?

Post by 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.
RichardT
Jedi Poster
Posts: 4076 Joined: Fri Aug 13, 2004 12:00 am Location: Ireland

Re: Google Drive for Musicians - Benefits?

Post by 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?
User avatar
Folderol
Jedi Poster
Posts: 18066 Joined: Sat Nov 15, 2008 12:00 am Location: The Mudway Towns, UK
Yes. I am that Linux nut {apparently now an 'elderly'}
Onwards and... err... sideways!

Re: Google Drive for Musicians - Benefits?

Post by RichardT »

Folderol wrote: Sat Jun 25, 2022 12:43 pm 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.
RichardT
Jedi Poster
Posts: 4076 Joined: Fri Aug 13, 2004 12:00 am Location: Ireland
Post Reply