Google is all set to launch its new tool “Backup and Sync” in the next week. The tech giant will be unveiling this new program on June 28, 2017. By making Backup and Sync available, Google is looking to allow users to back up all their important photos, documents and other files easily to the cloud.
The tool will be compatible both with PCs and Macs. It is believed that Backup and Sync is an update of Google Drive, which is also accessible both on PC and Mac systems.
The public came to know about this new backup tool by Google from a recent blog post.
Google would launch Backup and Sync for the purpose of helping everyday users in back up photos and files from their own computers and enjoy safe access to them from anywhere.
Google Backup and Sync
With this new tool, you will be able to select individual folders and files to backup. You will find all the videos and photos you have backed up in Google Drive and Google Photos. You can also open backed-up documents using Google Drive or Google Docs.
To open a backed-up spreadsheet file, on the other hand, you will have to either use Google Drive or open it through Google Sheets. Any presentation files you have backed up will have to be opened with Google Drive or Google Slides.
Although Google has designed this new backup tool for its consumers, it would respect the present Mac/PC settings of Google Drive in the Admin console of G Suite. According to the search engine giant, current G Suite customers should continue using the current version of Google Drive until the launch of Drive File Stream.
What is Drive File Stream?
It’s an enterprise-focused program and would be available generally to every G Suite Business, Enterprise, Basic, Nonprofit and Education domain. The program is currently accessible to the members of the EAP or Early Adopter Program. Here, it must be noted that Google has no plans of upgrading G Suite consumers to Backup and Sync from Google Drive automatically.
Google is, however, not the first company to announce a cloud-based backup tool in recent times. A few days before Google’s announcement, Box launched a similar service named Drive.
With Box Drive, users will be able to stream their content from cloud to their respective desktops. What’s more, the tool comes integrated natively with Mac Finder and Windows Explorer exactly like Microsoft OneDrive from Windows, Apple iCloud from Mac, Dropbox and Google Drive.
In addition, earlier this year (in March 2017 to be more precise), we also saw Apple updating its iCloud Drive by giving it the ability to automatically backup Document files and Desktop by default on iOS 10 and MacOS Sierra.
Google allows users to use storage space of 15GB for free. For individuals looking for more storage space, there are several options.
For enjoying storage space of 100 GB, you will need to spend $1.99 a month; for storage space of 1TB, you will have to spend $9.99 a month; for storage space of 10TB, you will have to spend $99.99 a month; for storage space of 20TB, you will have to spend $199.99 a month; and finally for storage space of 30TB, you will have to spend $299.99 a month.
The good news is that video and photo files can be uploaded to Google Photos under the “high quality” segment, thus not using up your Drive quota. However, video and image files uploaded under the “original quality” segment will use up your space in Google Drive. Every “high quality” video uploaded on Google Photos gets compressed to 1080p, while each “high quality” photo uploaded there gets compressed to 16 megapixels.
People who have the experience of losing all their data due to a hard drive failure or theft know how frustrating and time consuming the process of recovering all those files can be. But Google Backup and Sync has the potential of bringing an end to that misery. With it, you will have access to your entire desktop even after becoming a victim of data loss.
