Backup and Sync on the other hand is the consumer version, available for organisations too, which stores all or selected Drive content locally. Most employees use it to free up disk space, decrease time needed to sync files and to facilitate upload and download of files. The difference is that Drive for Desktop is more suitable for organisations as it lets you stream both My Drive and Shared Drive files from the cloud even in an offline mode. Google offers for this need 2 solutions: Google Drive for Desktop (formerly Drive File Stream) and Backup and Sync. When not working on a Chromebook, Google Workspace users might have a need to access and sync files from Drive to their desktop. Written by Julie Dockx, Head of Digital Workplace at Devoteam G Cloud Syncing to your desktop In this article, we will explain why, how and when you need to act (or not).

Google’s solutions for this, Google Drive for Desktop & Backup and Sync, will be updated still in 2021. If you would like to learn more about how to use Google Drive File Stream and Google Drive on the web, please consult the PDF attached to this article entitled Getting Started with Google Drive, or contact your Computing Coordinator to schedule a training appointment.If you are using Google Workspace (previously G Suite) as your collaboration tool, which is great, you might have come across the need to sync files to your desktop for different reasons. After the installer has downloaded to your computer's drive, launch it and follow the on-screen instructions to finish installing the Google Drive File Stream client. To install Google Drive File Stream on your personal computer, visit and click on the download for Windows button. Just look for the Google Drive File Stream entry in the list of applications. To install Google Drive File Stream on your work computer, we recommend that you use Software Center, which enables you to install software packages approved by the IT department without the need for administrator access to your computer.

This article will show you how to install the Google Drive File Stream client on your work or personal Windows computer.

Google drive file stream sign in