Quickest way to upload 500 GB to Google Drive

I have about 500GB to upload to to Google Drive. Two questions.

What would be the quickest way to do this? The drive app seems slow. Other people have said use CyberDuck but they seem to have deprecated Google Drive as an option (mentioned here)
Also I think uploading 500GB over my personal ISP would break their fair use policy. I can do this at work but if I took a hard drive to work synced it with my Google drive then went home and added the HD back to my personal PC would it need to re sync everything or would it be cleaver enough to realise it was the same 500GB and not sync it again?

Thanks

megaSteve4

Posted 2014-08-27T13:05:22.893

Reputation: 151

Did you buy additional storage for Google Drive? – Little Helper – 2014-08-27T13:12:11.700

7What ISP are you using that large uploads violate their policy? – kinokijuf – 2014-08-27T13:19:42.530

Taking the HD to work and then putting it back should work OK. It's also something you can try easily enough. – martineau – 2014-08-27T13:27:53.127

@LittleHelper yup 1TB only $9.99 – megaSteve4 – 2014-08-27T13:41:44.927

@kinokijuf Virgin UK based dont know the policy but can imagine if I pushed an additional 500GB in a month they might not like it - they are tight over here! – megaSteve4 – 2014-08-27T13:42:33.897

@martineau - good idea about testing it, I will try – megaSteve4 – 2014-08-27T13:43:32.207

@megaSteve4 Most fair-use policies target downloads not uploads. You may as well ask Virgin to clarify their position for your specific use case. At least then you'll be sure instead of speculating. – misha256 – 2015-07-03T05:46:29.877

What kind of data are you trying to upload. Is it documents / media. Is it compressed? – Firee – 2015-08-05T10:39:17.273

@Firee - I have completed the task now but for reference it was a complete mix of photos, some vids, loads of website stuff (text files). – megaSteve4 – 2015-08-05T14:37:34.013

Also to whoever out there down voted please explain. I think my question is legitimate? – megaSteve4 – 2015-08-05T14:38:24.957

yup 1TB only $9.99 But that is monthly charges, which means you will be shelling out $120 /year, right? – Firee – 2015-10-20T08:21:41.133

@Firee yes - that is billed monthly. – megaSteve4 – 2015-10-20T10:07:09.977

Answers

You can use Rclone - it is an open source tool developed at GitHub:

http://rclone.org

rsync for cloud storage - it is a command line program to sync files and directories to and from Google Drive and many other cloud hosts. Here is the Rclone Google Drive page:

http://rclone.org/drive

Steven Penny

Posted 2014-08-27T13:05:22.893

Reputation: 7 294

This seems to be the right tool for the job: google-docs-upload

It requires a "Google Apps for Business" account to upload without conversion.

Some kinds of documents are usually converted to google docs own formats; I assume that's not what you need for your data. With the tool above, you can control conversion explicitly;
But with any solution you use in the end, you need to take care of that.

Command line usage of google-docs-upload:

 Usage: java -jar google-docs-upload.jar <path> --recursive
 Usage: java -jar google-docs-upload.jar <path> --username <username> --password <password>
 Usage: java -jar google-docs-upload.jar <path> --auth-sub <token>
     [--username <username>]       Username for a Google account.
     [--password <password>]       Password for a Google account.
     [--recursive]                 Recursively upload all subfolders.
     [--remote-folder <path>]      The remote folder path to upload the documents separated by '/'.
     [--without-conversion]        Do not convert documents into the Google Docs format (unsupported files are not converted by default).
     [   ...   ]

Volker Siegel

Posted 2014-08-27T13:05:22.893

Reputation: 1 188

so to clarify using this command like approach should be quicker than using the app? Thanks – megaSteve4 – 2014-08-27T13:46:56.943

Technically, the reason I would prefer a command line tool is that it gives better control; You know what it will do more closely compared to a GUI app, and you do not want some extra background sync step nobody would notice normally with that amount of data. – Volker Siegel – 2014-08-27T13:50:28.687