Google is going to launch the Backup & Sync tool on June 28th as a way for users to more easily back up all of their important files, media, and documents from their desktops. While there still close to two weeks left before the new tool is available for users, once the rollout begins it should only take up to three days total for everyone to have access to it. Backup & Sync is aimed at taking over for the Google Drive for PC and Mac client as the new tool for backing stuff up to a connected Google account, though it’s also only intended for consumers, as Google still suggests that G Suite customers use Drive for PC and Mac for now, but eventually Drive for PC and Mac for G Suite customers will be replaced by Drive File Stream, a service which is currently in testing with a small number of G Suite customers.
Once this new tool is available for consumer users setting things up looks to be pretty easy to take care of. There will only be a few different steps to complete, the first of which is signing in with whatever Google account you’re going to want to use. From there you’ll select the computer you want to connect to the Backup & Sync tool, and the last step is to connect to Google Drive.
The tool will show you the different locations you’re backing stuff up from and tell you the size of each set of files. For example, in the image below you can see that 220MB shows up as the size for all the files that are being backed up from the “desktop” location. There is also a box for documents and a box for pictures, which itself has a separate box that can be checked if you want to back up pictures from your photo library. This screenshot is the example for a Mac, so Windows users would probably see “media gallery” instead of photo library as this is how Windows refers to it. Google notes that June 28th is the date that the tool will be available “for download,” so this suggests that users may need to download the tool manually and that it might not automatically update to change to the new tool.