Thursday, June 11, 2015

Google Drive on desktop: how to use multiple accounts

According to Google in this support link: "If you're using Drive, Docs, Sheets, or Slides on the web or a mobile device, you can sign in to multiple accounts, for example a work and personal account, and switch between them. But, if you're using the Drive folder on your computer, you can only sign into one account at a time." So if you love to use Google Drive to store & sync files to your multiple Google accounts on desktop, you must find another solution.


In this article, I'll show you how to use multiple accounts of Google Drive on PC. There are many third party applications supporting multiple accounts of Google Drive on PC, but almost of them will charge you money which can be used to extend your Google Drive space instead of buying new application. If you have money, I think you should buy more space for your Google Drive. If you have no money, here is the free solution.

Solution 1:
+Setup multiple user accounts on your OS (Windows)
+Each user, you will install a Google Drive with 1 your Google account
+Share the access permission of folders of Google Drive between user accounts
Advantage: you can have a number of accounts that you want. So you will have more free space on Google Cloud without paying more money.
Disadvantage: you can not sync folders at the same time to Google Cloud, you must switch between users of your OS.

Solution 2:
+Use odrive for other Google account + your existing Google Drive
+Install odrive, follow its website for how to. It's quite simple. I highlight here some basic steps: download >> install >> open odrive on your PC >> double click on the folder naming Google Drive >> connect to your Google account >> sync >> done
Advantage: You can use 2 Google accounts at the same time for syncing. That means you will have double size on Google Cloud at the same time. Beside that, odrive also supports DropBox and Facebook. So you can have more users of DropBox or Facebook.
Disadvantage: odrive just gives you free 1 account, that's reason why this solution still use Google Drive app for other account.

Happy using your Google Drive. Any comments is welcome.






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