Moving external folders currently tracked by Insync to new locations

1

Hi,

I am running into what I would consider a usability issue while using Insync on Windows 7. I tried searching the forums here, but haven’t seen any posts that match my particular issue.

Once I have a folder (we’ll call it “Folder” for this explanation) tracked by Insync in an external drive separate from the root Insync folder if I want to move the tracked folder and its contained files to another location with a Move action in Windows Explorer (another external drive for example) Insync does not seem to track that the folder has been relocated. Instead it complains that the folder has disappeared in the Action Required pane. Further, if I add the moved folder to Insync it then re-uploads its contents in a duplicate folder on Google Drive (named “Folder (2)”, in this example). Is there a better way to do this? As well, is there a feature request or a feature in the works to ease this process, for example via a “Move Folder” option in the right click Insync menu?

Other than this oddity, I have been enjoying Insync a lot as an active Plus user! Its great that I can choose folders and files all over and have them sync to Google Drive, but it would also be really helpful to be able to reorganize the files with only a rename/move operation happening on Google Drive and not a lot of re-syncing. For large files the re-sync can be very slow and network intensive…

Thank to anyone who can help!

2

@rpmurray If you mean to another location, is it inside the Insync folder or Google Drive folder? If yes, you may move the file using Google Drive web to your desired folder inside your Google Drive, and changes is sync locally.

If you have different use-case, tell us more about this and send us an email to support@insynchq.com.

3

@rpmurray I think you are doing the same as me. I have a folder of photos (about 80gb worth) and I want to move them from one external hardrive to another. This means Insync wants to do a full sync to google again as you have no way of telling insync that the folder is now ‘over there’.

Makes sense?

4

Yes, this is exactly what I am experiencing.

I am wondering if there is a way to point the symlink/alias Insync creates in the Insync root to the new location, essentially “moving” where Insync thinks the files are. In Linux this would probably be very easy, but Windows likes to hide details about symlinks/aliases, so I’m not sure how easy it is to do this, or if it is possible.

5

In my experience (on Linux, so YMMV), what you can do is pause syncing, move the folder to wherever you want it, then create a symbolic-link to it, with an identical name, where the folder used to be. Re-enabling Insync, it cannot tell that anything has changed and continues syncing smoothly.