Google Drive Support

[KermitParticipant]

After working for years w/the typically great UpdraftPlus support folks, I wanted to post an update to the issue of using Google Drive for backups.

tldr: don’t do it.

There is a consistent set of problems that UDP has never been able to fix. Duplicate directories. Backups going into the UpdraftPlus directory instead of the site’s subdirectory. Multiple ‘Site Folder’ generic subfolders with a single backup spread across them. It’s pretty bad.

I finally gave up and have moved all my clients over to Dropbox. It costs me twice as much, but I get a 50% storage, and there are ZERO problems with UDP working there.

This experiment in using UDP with Google Drive has cost me hundreds of dollars in man hours and I feel everyone should benefit from what I’ve learned.

UDP is still, IMHO, the best WordPress backup/migration utility. It’s use of standard ZIP archives and generally solid and flexible features are without peer. Whoever is coding the Google Drive support (which, I want to note, worked flawlessly back when it required APIs) should seriously recode that module from the ground up.

Kermit Woodall

[udadminKeymaster]

Hi Kermit,

A solution to Google Drive duplicate folders problems was released in UD 1.16.16, released at the end of July. (If UD detects duplicate folders, it will now automatically merge them). I see from the support channel that it was slightly before this release that you switched away to stop using it. If you switch back, all should be well.

The root cause is a design flaw in Google Drive itself, which is exposed (only) if your webserver experiences intermittent faulty network connectivity to Google Drive. UD since 1.16.16 has new code to detect that situation and apply remedies to it.

If you do still encounter any problems (we have not had any reported since that release), please post a log file in a ticket here: https://updraftplus.com/paid-support-requests/

Best wishes,
David

[KermitParticipant]

No one mentioned this despite my support tickets, but it’s not important, because it was still happening as of yesterday.

Kermit Woodall

Start

[udadminKeymaster]

Hi Kermit,

I can see that a support ticket was last opened on your account related to this issue was June 2nd, and subsequently you informed us that you’d decided to stop using Google Drive. One good way to keep on top of new developments that might interest you in UpdraftPlus is the changelog – you can read this here https://updraftplus.com/changelog/ .

I ran a task to download the “readme.txt” file from UpdraftPlus from your licensed sites. This revealed 34 sites which are running older versions of UpdraftPlus than 1.16.16. If any of these are connected to Google Drive, then they lack the new code that detects and merges duplicate folders. You should update them all. Note that you might still then intermittently see duplicate folders; but these will later be detected and automatically merged – you don’t need to invest time in manual action if you see them whilst they are there.

I will post the URLs of these sites in a private message.

David

[udadminKeymaster]

N.B. The version could not be detected on all sites (readme.txt is not necessarily always fetchable); so, there may be others.

[udadminKeymaster]

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