1. Ask Information Technology to install Drive for desktop on your PC or laptop. It can back up all of your content to the cloud, allowing you to easily access your files in Google Drive and your photos in Google Photos.
2. Launch it and click Sign in with browser. Enter your Google account and password in the web for authentication.
3. Then you can complete the installation properly. After that, click on the Drive for desktop icon on the right-bottom corner, hit the Settings button and choose Preferences, now you can start the setup.
4. First you can choose Add Folder in the My Computer tab. It allows you to specify the certain PC folders to sync with Google Drive.
5. Then you can choose to Sync with Google Drive or Back up to Google Photos. Either one you choose, Google will provide continuous data protection to these files, but there are some differences:
- By the first option, you can sync computer folders to Google Drives while all the changes made to the local folders will also by synced.
- By the second option, you can make a backup of photos and videos to Google Photos, and changes made to them won't be synced. However, this option is not available for other types of files in the selected folders.
6. If you want to do it the other way around - sync Google Drive to PC, you can go to Google Drive tab. It enables you to Stream files or Mirror files from My Drive to your PC. Both options will auto sync changes.
- "Stream files" will store all files in cloud and allows you to access them from your PC. You can also make certain files and folders available offline.
- "Mirror files" will store all files in both cloud and your computer. All the files and folders will be available offline and of course, it will take up more of your disk space.
You can choose according to your needs. For example, you can sync Google Photos with PC via the Stream files option, because phots and videos are usually more space-consuming.
7. Click Save to confirm all the settings and perform the synchronization. It may require a restart to make the changes take effect.
After you set up Drive for desktop on your computer, it will create a Google Drive shortcut with drive letter in Windows Explorer. With it, you can easily access your files and folders in My Drive.