How to restart Insync after a time

Bugs and issues Windows
#1

I’ve got a computer that I think I was running insync on a long time ago. More recently I’ve been running Google drive. So I want to start using Insync again on this machine rather than Google drive. So I switch off Google drive, and I rename my ~/Google (where it was syncing) to ~/Google-old so I can start again with a clean slate, because I don’t know if Insync will be happy synching the same location. So I do that. Then I reinstall insync and start it up.

Well, this is super weird… the activity log shows a continual stream of activity, as if something is going on. The sync location is where I want it to be, aka ~/Google, however that folder doesn’t exist, and still doesn’t exist. So it’s scary seeing a ton of activity with no apparent reality to it. The Errors list says that ~/Google is missing, please locate the base folder… well it’s tempting to create an empty folder, locate it and continue on… However some time ago I did something like that, and Insync trashed my entire drive, and I had to spend a whole day on my Google drive restoring it all, file by file from my trash. Not only that, if I do click the Locate option, it threatens to trash all my files in the cloud, so needless to say, I don’t want to do that. But how to recover now is not clear, and what insync is beavering away in a scary fashion is not clear. All I want to do is something I would have thought is something people would need to do on the odd occasion which is start synching from a fresh empty folder, but there is no obvious way to do that.

1 Like
#2

Hi @xpusostomos!

Good call on using a different sync folder as that is indeed the recommended way.

The error suggests that this might be a previous configuration so when you reinstalled the app, it tried to locate the folder from before. In any case, I would highly recommend two things:

  1. Remove the Google account
  2. Check Google Drive activity to see if anything changed recently

If your Google Drive files are intact, you can install Insync from scratch by doing this:

  1. Follow the uninstallation guide: https://help.insynchq.com/en/articles/112899-uninstalling-insync
  2. Create a new ~/Google folder that you can select as your sync location (Base Folder)
  3. Install the latest version of Insync (Mac, Linux, Windows) + add your account again: https://help.insynchq.com/en/articles/2853798-setup-guide-for-google-drive-accounts. Choose the empty Google folder you created in Step 2 as your Base Folder and select which file you’d like to sync.

You can start with a few small files first and check its sync progress, then proceed with the rest of the items you want to sync to your computer.

Thank you!

#3

What does “remove the google account” mean? I can see no options to remove my google account from insync. There is an option to add an account, but remove I can’t see.

I will try those uninstall instructions, next time I have that computer in front of me… but…
shouldn’t there be a menu option somewhere to start syncing from scratch in a new folder? People who somehow find themselves needing to start again… e.g. their drive fills up and they need to start again in a new place, are in danger of giving up in frustration, choosing the “locate drive” option, and trashing their drive. If you look back in my posting history here, you’ll see where I did exactly that.