Moving External HD from one computer to another

I would like to be able to:

  1. Create a folder on an external drive and place a symlink of it into my Insyc folder on Computer A so that the folder and all files placed into it will be uploaded to my Google Drive.
  2. Occasionally move that external drive to Computer B where there is a symlink of the same folder in its Insync folder and have it continue to upload to the same place on my Google Drive.
  3. Move it back to Computer A and have it still upload to the same place on Google Drive.

Is this possible, or will it create a duplicate folder on Google Drive and upload all the same files again?

For one thing, I work back and forth between two computers using a number of external drives - it’s for video editing so I can’t have the media files play back from the cloud, nor do I have room for them on the laptop.

For another, I’m uploading a lot of big files to Google Drive and I’d like to have some of that done from the computer I’m not currently editing with. I’d love to be able to plug the external drive into either computer and know that the symlinks are directing my files to the same place…

Hi @Jonkwilliams as of now we cannot easily support this as it will create conflicts between the two set ups.

Let’s say you synced a new item via computer A on your external drive then you connect it to computer B – it might read computer B as the most recently modified folder, hence, might not sync changes from computer A and only read changes from computer B.

Hope this helps!

Thanks, Jaduenas. But it’s the same folder on either computer A or computer B because it’s on an external drive that’s being moved from one to the other. Are you saying there is information stored in a database on each computer about what folders and files have been added, removed, etc? What happens if that database gets corrupted? Can it cause data loss? I have had folders full of files disappear from my Google Drive and can’t retrieve them from Google Drive’s trash. Does Insync cause folders/files to disappear without sending them to Google’s trash?