Well…while GoogleFS is running, there is a drive letter that is mapped and you can access files similar to how you would access a local drive letter. However, the files are actually stored as cached “chunks” in C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Google\DriveFS\xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx\content_cache
along with metadata stored in an sqlite database. (xxxxxxx is a random string of characters.) As long as GoogleFS is running, the program emulates a drive letter and a familiar file system. But when GoogleFS isn’t running, all you have is a bunch of anonymous cache files that may or may not even be complete copies of the original files.
What I’ve found is that even when the files are configured to be available offline, UrBackup doesn’t recognize the GoogleFS mapped drive as a valid drive letter, so it’s ignored. At best, I might be able to back up the cached files. But the individual cached files would be pretty much useless. The backup would probably only be useful if I restored ALL of the cached files AND the metadata.
But since GoogleFS does seem to cache the files in the user profile, that does imply that either an image backup OR a full file backup could potentially restore the GoogleFS files. So at least I might possibly be able to just restore all of the files and folders in C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Google\DriveFS to maybe get access to the offline-readable files.
I’m not actually facing a problem right now. I’m just trying to protect against a situation where, for example, I’m lost access to my Google Drive account for whatever reason. With Google Drive, I could simply rely on UrBackup for a local backup copy. But that’s strategy has now become difficult with GoogleFS.
To answer your questions specifically:
- The files are cached locally as described above. I’ve marked most/all of them as “available offline”, so they’re cached locally as well as available in the cloud.
- GoogleFS has created a G: drive. I’ve configured UrBackup to back up G: as an optional drive if it’s available/mounted.
- NTFS permissions…hadn’t considered that. But upon investigation…and not surprisingly…, GoogleFS doesn’t seem to support NTFS permissions since it’s not really an NTFS file system. (The cached files would, of course, since they’re stored on the NTFS Windows system volume…but the user would have the )
Thanks for thinking with me!