Google Drive File Stream folders are missing

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I am using Google Drive File Stream and have a problem where some of the folders are missing from a team drive/shared drive. The folders appear in the web interface, but not in the Mac Finder. There doesn't seem to be any option to refresh.

This problem has come up intermittently in the last few months, and also is reported by other members of my team. I'm on Google Drive File Stream version 41.0.2.0 and macOS Catalina 10.15.6.

Best Answer

I received the following procedure from Google Cloud Support and it seems to have fixed the problem for me.

Go to Drive File Stream icon on the menu bar > gear icon > Pause Syncing
Then, Drive File Stream > gear icon > Preferences > Disconnect Account
Next, Drive File Stream > gear icon > Quit
Fine the cache folder: Finder > Go menu > Go to Folder > paste ~/Library/Application Support/Google/DriveFS
Delete the folder DriveFS
Drag the app Drive File Stream to the trash
Restart the Mac
Reinstall Drive File Stream
Go to Drive File Stream > gear icon > About, and verify that Version: 41.0.2.0

This worked for me but seems very elaborate. Hopefully they will come up with a better way in the future.

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I emailed Google and got a few clues from them:

Google does not track software incompatibilities, so there is no way to know if TotalFinder is responsible for the random " (1)" file duplications. I suspect it's not.
Google Drive does not support resource forks or aliases. Dropbox has the same limitation, but it does not destroy the files like Google Drive does.

I have briefly documented the issues here.

My final word is that Dropbox is safer to use than Google Drive, and that both are limited in such a way that they cannot act as perfect substitutes to external hard drive backups.

Google Drive client fails to sync Pages documents

I can't be sure but I suspect this may be due to Apple's autosave and versioning system.

So I found and tried this to disable it:

defaults write com.apple.iWork.Keynote ApplePersistence -bool no
defaults write com.apple.iWork.Pages ApplePersistence -bool no
defaults write com.apple.iWork.Numbers ApplePersistence -bool no
defaults write com.apple.TextEdit ApplePersistence -bool no
defaults write com.apple.Preview ApplePersistence -bool no

Then create then edit a new document multiple times, and it syncs fine.

There is metadata (extended attriutes?) or something (hardlinks?) on existing documents though, so they may need to be "saved as" under another name, and the original removed.

Initial results show that I don't have file sync issues anymore but I can't be quite sure if my fix is effective or I'm lucky, or an Apple update put things in order. Whatever, feedback would be helpful.

I opened a topic on Google Drive's support forum but with limited hope.

Best Answer

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