Why doesn't GoogleDrive save local storage with file status "onine only"?

[Kang]

For GoogleDrive for desktop, there are two statuses for any files, "available offline" and "online only". And it is said that "if you select a file or several files to be available offline, this means that the app will actually download the file in your computer to make it available at all time even when you don't have an internet connection, of course, this will take up the storage of your computer. The Online only option, it's self-explanatory, the files in Google Drive are synced but not downloaded in your computer, and they are only available when you have an internet connection". 

But when I tested it with some big file, I found something weird: 

- I got 180G left on my computer at first, then I copied a 20G file to the google drive folder; after the copy, the sync was finished, there was only 160G left on my computer disk - and it didn't change whether I made the file "available offline" or "online only". 

- I also tried to upload a big file with an internet browser, then made it "available offline" and synced it with GoogleDrive for desktop, then, of course, it took up more storage of my local disk, but after I made it back to "online only", the storage didn't change. For the details, please see the attachment (here). 

I wonder how can I solve the problem? I hope GoogleDrive for desktop can save storage of my local disk. 

[Kang]

The word "onine" in the title should be "online". I tried to revise it but failed to post again and again. 

[StephenHind]

@Kang Google Drive for desktop has some kind of "intelligent caching" so it will automatically keep files it thinks you need, based on your activity with the files. Google doesn't give much insight into how this works but, at a guess, since you've only just uploaded it the algorithm may determine you're likely to access it again soon, so keeps a cached copy, hence the storage is still in use.

[Kang]

Hi StephenHind, thank you for your reply. Now it makes sense to me! 😄

But is it possible that I can fix it (that if I make a file "online only", it just simply delete the local file for me to save storage in local disk)? Or should I just upload more files to see if Google Drive will clear the earlier cache? 

[StephenHind · Accepted solution]

@Kang there's a couple of articles you can have a look at:

• Configure Google Drive for desktop

This gives you the general settings and the two most likely of interest are:

• ContentCachePath
  Please heed the warning

• ContentCacheMaxKbytes

  so you can set the maximum size of the cache

• MinFreeDiskSpaceKBytes
  so you can set the minimum amount of disk space needed

This second article is a user-to-user discussion on how others have been successful/unsuccessful with clearing the cache:

• How to Clear Cache of Google Drive File Stream?

I hope these help.

[Kang]

@StephenHind Thank you very much for your information! According to the users' discussion How to Clear Cache of Google Drive File Stream?, I tried disconnecting my account in Google Drive and signing in again, then seem that the cache was cleared and the storage is released. I have updated the operation and results in the attachment (here). 

[VaivaS]

Hello, I have a similar, but a bit different question. I checked my files to be streamed, but I wanted them all to be available offline, so I checked the "Available offline" option. Right now I see all my files downloaded with the green circle, they all open, copy, etc., but when I open my computer they do not take up any space on my drive. And they didn't even have to take any time to sync, 500 GB of files just appeared there 😄 I turned off the internet connection, and they are indeed there, available to edit, download, and take absolutely zero space off my SSD hard drive. How can this be and should I be worried? Or is this just some kind of error of my Windows, that they don't show how much of my disk space the files take up?

[msykes]

For posterity... I've had the same issue, on a MacOS, and there's an easy solution:

Navigate to your Google Drive folder in Finder, right click the file your folder and select "Remove Download". That's it.

Note that this isn't with the other Google Drive contextual options, for me it's at the top of the menu.

Hoep that helps someone! I bet there's a similar Windows option too.