I use Google Drive File Stream for work, and there are certain mission-critical files that I need available for offline access. File Stream makes this easy: control-click on the file, and choose "Available Offline". Great!
But where are these files stored? With the "old" Google Drive (now "Backup & Sync") there was a Google Drive folder at the top of my user directory; this folder was always available, whether Backup & Sync was running or not, and Time Machine would back it up for me (if I wanted it to). With File Stream, I have no idea where those files are — when the program is not running the "Google Drive" volume unmounts from my system, and the files appear to be completely inaccessible; moreover I don't think Time Machine backs them up.
Where is File Stream storing these offline files? Is there a way to back them up, or to access them when the program is not running?
Just for clarity’s sake: I am interested in the answers to these questions on MacOS, specifically in Catalina, if that makes a difference.
Best Answer
By default, Google Drive for desktop (formerly known as Google Drive File Stream) stores cached files in
~/Library/Application Support/Google/DriveFS/$account_id/content_cache, where $account_id is the numeric ID of your google account. The files aren't encrypted or anything, but they don't have any metadata (or even their original filenames) so I don't think you'll find them terribly useful. The metadata seems to be stored in various SQLite databases in in the$account_idfolder. In an emergency an expert might be able to reconstruct the original file names and folder structure.If you want a full backup of your Google Drive, you can try backing up the Google Drive volume itself (
/Volumes/GoogleDrive), while Google Drive for desktop is running.