Google drive on PC (Solved-ish)

[ChamomileShark]

Long shot but someone may know the answer.

I have/had everything backed up on the cloud via Google Drive. Something happened, I got some message I didn't really catch but now...

1. I can see all the backed up & synch'd data in the cloud.

but

2. The list of folders I'm actively synching are no longer showing in the app.

If I add a folder that has already been synch'd it's creating another folder and re-uploading stuff, rather than seeing the folder is already there and fully synch'd.

Is there a way of fixing this or do I have to delete everything already synch'd and start all over again?

[lfm]

Everything you wrote fits to this
- you somehow moved original folder that app sees
- dragging and dropping and selecting in Exlorer this easily happends
- sometimes you drop things in a folder, and then suddenly it expands and you drop stuff in another subfolder

To figure out where things are:
c:\users\loginname is often the base folder where everything starts.
- loginname here, can be either part of email for microsoft account you have or your actual login name
- microsoft fiddle with these things and you can create a login name that difffer from microsoft account

Start at c:\users and go from there.

I think it will be there. Check recycle bin as well.

[ChamomileShark]

hi, thanks, I probably wasn't clear in my question, but that wasn't the situation.

I got into chat with Google support and after we tried several things they said this....

"From everything you've shared, it sounds like Google Drive for desktop might have lost track of its sync configuration, which can happen if there's a corrupted local cache, a settings reset, or a brief hiccup in the app that triggered a reset — that might’ve been the flash message you saw earlier.

Here’s the thing — when Drive forgets your sync folders and you try to re-add one, it treats it like a new folder unless the sync database recognizes it. That’s why it’s uploading all over again instead of linking to what's already in the cloud. Unfortunately, there isn’t a way for Drive to “match” your local folder with the already-synced cloud version unless it was already being tracked before the issue happened.

You don’t need to delete what’s already in the cloud though — that’s safe and sound. What you can try is removing and reinstalling Google Drive for desktop completely, and during the setup, choose the same folders that were previously syncing. Sometimes, a clean install lets the app rebuild its sync relationships. But keep in mind, if it doesn’t recognize them as previously synced, it might start syncing them fresh again. To avoid duplicates or confusion, you might want to rename the local folders before adding them back so you can see clearly what gets uploaded."

After the uninstall and re-install, when I added a folder onto the list in Google Desktop it now told me there was already a folder with that name in the cloud and do I want to merge with this folder. That seems to fix it, it seems to be synching anything new but for some reason all the green ticks on folders and files aren't there.

So basically, solved-ish.

I'll amend the thread title, someone else might find this useful.