One Google Drive Account, Multiple Windows Users

Question

There are two similar questions to this one that I can find: here and here. I am in this situation, and wondering if anything has changed in 9 years: I want one (1) (count 'em one) Google Drive account. I have essentially two Windows (10 or 11) users, one of which is an admin and one not. My ideal situation is to have reliable sync at all times with only one copy of the files on the hard drive.

Currently, there is only one Google Drive client, installed on the Windows admin account, and it points to a folder to which all the Windows users have access (C:\Google Drive). This initially appeared to work fine, but then I noticed that, on bootup, if I don't log into the admin account (which then starts up the Google Drive client), we don't have sync. Indeed, my daughter actually lost work - the only explanation for losing the work I can think of (could be wrong) is that, without the Google Drive client running, it didn't detect the change, so that when it finally did start up, it overwrote her changes with what it thought was the most recent version. This is obviously completely unacceptable.

So my question is this: can I have two Google Drive clients (NOT accounts!) running on two different Windows user accounts on the same machine, pointing to the same folder, and syncing the same (singular) Google Drive account? This would be somewhat preferable to duplicating the entire Google Drive contents for each user, which, while I'm fairly confident would work, would also seem to be a waste. I'll certainly do that if I have to, though.

I have a paid copy of Insync, so solutions involving Insync are perfectly fine.

Answer 1

IMO all the required hassle might not be worth it considering you will be relying on a hacky solution and that you might have to be continually monitoring it to validate that is still working correctly to avoid surprises like being unable to recover a file that you thought was synced to Google Drive storage.

Customize Drive for desktop settings doesn't mention this use case but it provides instructions about how to customize several settings.

You would have to find a way to have all the parameters handled by the Windows user, instead of globally, and have those parameters read by a single Google Drive for Desktop component. Some applications that are designed to be run as a Windows service are capable of doing this but the docs don't indicate that Google Drive for Desktop has this capability.

You will be relying on Google Drive for Desktop's ability to handle multiple "threads" in order to separate the background processes required by each Windows user. Especially those that might have to be run in parallel, otherwise, you will have collisions. For example, when running simultaneous tasks that lock or modify the same system files.

Also, you should keep in mind that Google implements measures to prevent abuse that could affect the performance of their services as well as the legality of making changes.

The measures might include the IP used by each "user". In order to prevent having problems you might have to use a different IP for each user. This implies that you have to use one Internet connection for each user.

Related

Questions from Google Drive Community

• Google drive letter G conflict across multiple PC users PeteranDi, a Diamond Product Expert, gives instructions to preselect the Drive letter for each user. Below is an extract of this answer:

You need to pre-select a letter for each user which will be assigned for each reboot.

Open Settings:

1. On your task bar, click Google Drive
2. Click the Gear icon
3. Scroll down and select Preferences
4. Click the new Gear icon for Settings See screenshot online and use the drop down to select another letter.