Guide to Change Google Drive Folder Location in Windows 10

Google Drive is one of the most popular cloud storage service providers. Most of us already have a Gmail account that provides automatic access to Google Drive, among other Google apps and services. Most users do not pay attention to the location of the Google Drive folder during installation. What if you want to change the folder location of Google Drive later?

Google Drive users usually choose the default drive during the installation process, which is the C drive in Windows. This is also where the Windows operating system is installed by default. This is not a good idea as it creates a single point of failure on your system drive for both system-level files and important documents you store in Drive.

Let’s take a look at why you should consider changing the location of the Google Drive folder and how to do it.

Why Should You Change the Google Drive Folder Location?

As mentioned earlier, the default location for installing all applications and software on a Windows computer is the C drive, whether it’s the operating system itself or any third-party application you might want to install separately. This has always been the case, but there are several reasons to reconsider Google Drive’s folder location.

Let’s say the system files got corrupted, leading to a situation where you have to format the C drive and reinstall the Windows operating system. You will need to reinstall every app you have installed on that drive, including Google Drive. Then you will need to redownload and sync any data that might reach GBs (gigabytes) if not TBs (terabytes). Add a slow internet connection to the mix and you’re looking at a potential headache.

Causes of corruption can include bugs, malware, viruses, fixing a bug, and sometimes even Windows updates. In general, it’s a good idea to keep OS-level system files, user files, and third-party applications separate on different drives.

The opposite is also possible in cases where a bug in one of the third-party apps might force you to format the drive. Again, it leads to the dire situation.

Modern desktop and laptop computers today contain at least one SSD or HDD. SSDs have higher read/write speeds, but are also more expensive. For this reason, users prefer a combination of a smaller capacity SSD to install Windows and improve daily performance, and a larger capacity HDD/s for infrequently used files. Speed ​​doesn’t really matter, as these files are not frequently accessed or needed. Another reason why you would want to change the Google Drive folder location and move it to HDD.

We looked at how moving the Google Drive folder to a separate drive might be beneficial in the future. If you haven’t created a partition or you need a new one, you can install a separate drive or partition the existing one before migrating.

How to Change Google Drive Folder Location

The steps are simple and shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.

Stage 1: Right-click on the Google Drive client icon in the System Tray in the Taskbar and click the three-dot menu button. Select Preferences there.

Step 2: Under the Settings tab, click the Disconnect Account button to remove your Google (Gmail ID) from the Drive app installed on Windows. Click Disconnect again in the pop-up window to confirm your decision.

Stage 3: Go back to Google Drive Settings from the System Tray as you did before and this time you will see an option to sign in. Enter the Google account login details and confirm with 2FA if you have set it up to complete the login process. .

Step 4: When you log in, you will be asked to select the folders you want to back up. Choose your folders according to your needs. Click Next.

Step 5: On the next screen, click Change next to the Folder location path to change the default Google Drive folder location on the Windows computer to your preferred one. You can select an existing folder or create a new folder such as My Drive.

Step 6: The folder location path should now be reflected in the Settings windows. Confirm it is correct and click Start to start the syncing process.

New Home Address

All Google Drive files and folders stored in Google Drive should be seamlessly moved to the new Google Drive folder location. Since all data is stored in the cloud, there is no risk of loss. If they are still there, you can choose to delete the old data found in the last drive location.

Here’s a nice trick. Why not move important files and folders to an external hard drive instead? That way, you now have a backup that you can store offline for immediate access and protection.

Next: Tired of waiting for Google Drive to compress your files? Learn how to download multiple files from Drive without compressing them.