NAS Drive Setup with Google Drive

[zedx19]

Hoping someone more tech savvy than me can I help as I'm stumped!

I have purchased a second hand D LInk DNS 320 NAS Drive, with 2 x 2TB drives in RAID1 configuration. I have mapped the drive to my Windows 10 laptop and can add files fine. However, when I try to set my Google Drive location to the NAS drive I get the error, "File system not supported, please choose another folder location". The whole point of the NAS drive was to have my Google Drive download to the NAS and access via the network! There are no "Applications" within the NAS drive interface for Google Drive either.

Anyone know why Google Drives backup and sync program won't let me pick the network drive??

[BigTZ4M]

Why it doesn't I can only guess at, but it would be that they offer such large storage plans for a reasonable price (or free) that they need most users to not fully utilise it. One way of doing this, as you have found out, is to restrict syncing to local storage of the machine. You're likely to have far less data you want to sync off your machine than a shared network device. Also if you could sync a network device, it would make it trivial to set up multiple machines to store files on the NAS and sync the lot to one google drive, thus reducing the revenue google get from needing multiple accounts.

Can you get around it? Yes, although I've had limited success with applications run on the local machine. Changing your NAS to one that has support built in like Synology or UnRaid is the way I fixed it (using the latter). But maybe you could give something like an alternative sync client to google's own a try? Certainly it would be cheaper and not make your current NAS hardware instantly redundant. Things like this have a 15 day trial to see if it works for you before shelling out for it: https://www.insynchq.com/

One of the features touted in the pro version is 'sync network drives' which sounds like what you want. I have to say I haven't tried it so can't tell you if it will do as you want, but worth a shot to try.

[zedx19]

Thank you for your very helpful response, it would seem to cheapest and easiest option is a Synology drive then. Wouldn't have thought it would be so difficult and there must be other people in this situation. Maybe I'm looking at it wrong and there are alternative options?

I have 500(ish) gig of files on Google Drive. I have a laptop with HP Elitebook with 256gb SSD, a Chromebook with 64gb and a Dell XPS 13 with 512gb SSD. I want to be able to have a central storage point so each machine can access the files. I want that storage point to sync to Google Drive, so I have local copies and a Cloud backup, accessible from anywhere.

[BigTZ4M]

Your requirement isn’t that unusual but NAS marketed at the home and at a low price point tend to not have it as a feature. A Synology is a much, much better product and from what I understand will indeed be the easiest off the shelf way to achieve what you want.

[mattley]

zedx19 said:

I want that storage point to sync to Google Drive, so I have local copies and a Cloud backup, accessible from anywhere.

Synology for the drive functionality and Backblaze as a backup.

Accessible from anywhere vs security will be for you to decide, I wouldn't publish my home network through an ISP supplied router but that's your call.