Google Drive Multiple Accounts

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Concordia Zentner

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Aug 5, 2024, 12:31:19 AM8/5/24

to emchomacal

Im new to rClone, and I need help understanding how to apply the setup instructions (here) to my target use case. Specifically, I want to approximate the functionality that the "Google Drive" client used to give me on Windows (I've migrated to Ubuntu). This amounted to an automated, bidirectional sync between 3 independent google drive accounts and their associated folders on my local machine:

A) Configure rClone with 3 separate "remotes". These remotes should be configured for "Service Account Support", each having some kind of "client_id" and "client_secret" stored in an rClone config file.

B) Learn how to use the "bisync" command to sync each of the three remotes to/from my local machine (I can probably figure that out).

C) Write a script, to be run periodically as a "cron job", that will automate the execution of the bisync commands from step B (I can figure that out too).

I'm in over my head with step A, particularly the steps regarding "Service Account Support". I got most of the way through the process for my first gmail account, but got that "clueless and probably breaking something" feeling and backed out.

Question 1) Does what I describe in steps A-C sound correct for my use case?

Question 2) Am I correct to go through the "Service Account Support" steps, given that I need to be syncing multiple accounts?

Question 3) Is creating my 3 remotes merely a matter of running "rclone config" 3 separate times, once for each gmail account?

Question 4) Is it safe to make all those changes at the Google Developer Console for each gmail account, and then store those "id" and "secret" keys in a config file? (cyber security isn't really a strong point for me)

I did find another topic on the forum (here) that asked a similar question, but the answer didn't quite give me what I needed. Obviously I'm green at all of this; I thank everyone for their patience, and for sharing some wisdom with the new guy.

I suggest you start by setting up a single remote with plain default settings, that is no service account support and no personal client ID - just leave these fields blank when filling in the prompts in rclone config. That is follow the flow you see here:

When we get to this, then I currently guess that it will be enough to create a personal client ID using your primary account and then use it for all the remotes. It is possible to encrypt the config containing tokens, client secrets etc. but again let's get something running first.

Wow what a great community! Thank you guys for your help! I've got a busy weekend with work, but as soon as that's done I'll focus on getting a single remote set up (per the excellent instructions on this site) without the "service account support" option. From there I'll run a few tests with the various options (rclone mount, etc), and report back with what I'm seeing.

a) One working remote that has been tested with the moveto, mount, and bisync commands (all work great!). During the config process I chose "default" to a large number of options I didn't understand...no harm done as far as I can tell.

b) Along the way, I saw that the config menu changes after you create your first remote, opening up the option to create additional remotes. And so, I am good to create those other two remotes at any time.

c) I have studied the pros/cons of mount vs bisync, and I'm still trying to decide. I was always a bisync kind of guy before, but now Ole Frost has me reexamining the issue. In any case, I know either option will work.

Question 6) By my count, rClone will be locally storing client_id and client_secret (in the config file), as well as login credentials for my 3 gmail accounts (somewhere I haven't run down yet). Should I take measures to protect this information (some kind of encryption)...how do you guys handle that data?

I encrypt my config and use the --config-command and the Windows Credential Manager to protect my password. This way you can only see/use the config if logged in as me, not sure how to best protect it on Linux.

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.

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.

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.

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.

How to manage multiple Google Drive accounts on Mac or Windows 11/10/8/7? In addition to using the Drive for desktop program, there are two other methods to finish this job. Below are the detailed steps.

Performing the Google Drive desktop app with multiple accounts is a straightforward way to run two or more Google Drive accounts. But it only allows you to add capped at 4 accounts. When you quit the Google Drive for desktop program or disconnect your accounts from it, the Google Drive disks will disappear from your computer with keeps files in a Google Drive folder.

Step 4. Then, press the profile icon on the top right corner, and pick Add another account. Complete signing in of the second account to connect it with Drive for desktop. If you have other accounts, add them to Drive for desktop in the same way.

There is the possibility that Drive for desktop goes down. Thus, we offer you two additional ways that you would be able to link Google Drive accounts on a single computer as well. One is to manage multiple, even unlimited accounts with CBackup, which is easy and free. Another is to make Google Drive sync multiple accounts with its sharing feature. Now, let's have a look at detailed steps to run multiple Google accounts with these methods.

CBackup is a professional yet easy-to-use cloud backup service that makes managing multiple cloud storage accounts an easy task. It enables you to work with unlimited accounts of mainstream clouds, like Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, and other cloud storage in a single interface.

Further, if you want to transfer a large amount of data from Google Drive to another account or other cloud drive, it offers a cloud-to-cloud backup and cloud-to-cloud sync feature to move files between cloud storage with one click.

If your Google Drive is full and want more free cloud storage space, CBackup will do you a big favor, which allows you to combine cloud storage to increase the backup space for free. For example, you could merge two Google Drive accounts to gain 30GB of storage space without payment.

You are able to connect Google Drive for desktop 2 accounts on Windows 11 and Mac via its sharing feature with the Google Drive website. This method is a little complicated and needs you to pick one account as a primary account. In this primary account, you can create a folder to accommodate items you intend to sync between Google Drive accounts.

Step 2. Click on New and choose the Folder option to create a new folder. Then, add documents that needed to be accessed from another account to this newly created folder.