Disk Space Reducing after Installing Google Drive File Stream

[akwalela]

Hi Peoples, My Local Disk c: (SSD) Space is Reducing after Installing Google Drive File Stream, Does Google Drive File Stream Store content on Local Disk C: ???

[iomare · Accepted solution]

Hi,

It will store the files on the notebook if you make the files or folders available offline in the settings. So if the files you are working on are also available when you are not connected to the internet they are saved on the computer.

What capacity SSD do you have in the notebook? You can most likely upgrade to a much higher capacity one for not much cost.

Hope it helps,

David

[akwalela]

Thanks lomare, Primary disk is 256GB SSD, but I have Secondary 1TB HDD, Thanks for the answer.

[iomare]

You're welcome.

Ok, you have the 256 GB M2 PCIe NVMe SSD in the notebook. If you ever want to upgrade let me know and I can provide a guide. There is no limit to the capacity of the M2 drive you can install.

Take care,

David

[iomare]

just wanted to add since you got me reading about it a bit.

It depends if you are using google file stream installed by yourself and your google drive or you are using it installed by the admin of an institution such as a school or so. As in the second case, the admin would also in some way be in control of the backup and sync feature of the files on your computer.

Now if used just as a streaming feature, without having the files available offline there will not be much space used on your c: drive.

The file you are working on while online will be downloaded to a cache location on the c: drive (entirely) and synched constantly so that more people can be working on a single file and you see the changes being made "live". This happens in a kind of "streaming" way. So I guess if the file is large, while you are online using it, it will temporarily reduce the space on the c: drive and then free the space ones you pass to another file.

If you make the files available offline either by downloading them from your shared institution drive or make them available offline in the settings of your google drive they will be permanently stored in this cache.

Cache location

Windows— %LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\DriveFS
Mac— ~/Library/Application Support/Google/DriveFS

It is possible to change this location if you know what you are doing or an IT admin of your institution could do it. You can see here in this doc under ContentCachePath

https://support.google.com/a/answer/7644837

Some further reading

https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/9308619?hl=en

https://support.google.com/a/answer/7496409?hl=en&ref_topic=7455083#

regards,

David