I was successfully using GDrive and Scrivener,thanks to some advice I got here on the forum. At least, I thought I was. But today I opened a project (via the startup panel’s “Open Recent…”) on my desktop and discovered very quickly that some edits I had made last night using my laptop were not there.
I have been conscientious about using “File/Save” and then waiting until the little GDrive icon on my task bar stops its spinning before I actually exit Scrivener. Still, something went wrong. 
Did a search here but did not see this type of issue, so, I was wondering, what is the best and most foolproof way to take advantage of GDrive with Scrivener?
Thanks!
John
We have not yet accumulated much data yet on whether Google’s technology is robust enough to handle complex formats like Scrivener’s. It’s hard to say, based on what I hear, because most of what I hear are the problems. Nobody would write in specifically to praise Google Drive, to us. However it’s interesting that there haven’t been many defenders of it on the forum. Back when we had an advisory on Dropbox, there were plenty of people who wrote to say they had been using it successfully, and it was in part their feedback that helped shape the current advice on how to use these services in general. So it’s strange there isn’t much defence of Google Drive. Personally, for my own work I would avoid it for this type of high-bandwidth usage (but I am particularly conservative on this topic. I don’t even use Dropbox for this kind of stuff, myself. I’d rather take the slower and less convenient route of transferring zipped copies from one computer to another).
Yes, I may have to do that flashdrive approach. I’m not worried about bandwidth myself, but whether Google Drive is properly synching all the files and folders using by a Scrivener project seems to be a bit of a mystery at this point. If it was, it would be ideal for me. Until we are sure, however, I will step back and use a flashdrive (goodness knows I have enough of them!) Would you suggest doing copy/pastes or saving directly to the flashdrive?
Thanks!!
John
Well to be clear I do use synchronisation for transfer. What I meant by that was, I don’t put bare projects in those folders and work on them from there. What I do is the “Alternative Method” described in this article. I have all of my Scrivener settings on all computers set up to dump their automatic zipped backups to my shared folder (I keep one folder for Windows and one for Mac). This happens whenever the project gets automatically backed up, which by default is when you close the project. So I literally don’t have to do anything at all to distribute the latest version of my work to all machines. I just close out and it uploads.
It’s what I do when I sit down to a new computer that is a bit different. I keep a “working copy” in a separate location off of sync. So I erase that, and then I drag a copy in of the latest uploaded backup, unzip it, and work on it. When I’m done I close out, it uploads, and the process repeats. So it’s really only one extra step: when I sit down to a new computer I have to “download” the latest version.
Since this method involves merely uploading and downloading one single file, the Zip file backup, it is substantially lower risk and doesn’t put any strain upon the infrastructure involved. That only happens a few times a day, rather than a few dozen times per minute, which normal usage of a Scrivener project might generate on the server.
But once again: I am rather conservative on this topic. There are probably many thousands of people using Dropbox successfully with the live method. The question is: are there as many happy people using Google Drive out there? Maybe so, but we haven’t heard much about that yet; just glitch reports like yours. Hence, I share my conservative viewpoint on the matter.
Thank you! I will carefully review that article and consider my options.
regards
John
In my experience (MBP retina 13" running ML) GD sometimes stops syncing mysteriously. Only way to resume syncing is to quit it and open it again. I must say I don’t even put my .scriv projects in it, and yet GD does seem to be a bit unreliable
I’m using Google Drive and have no complaints or losses to report.
Like Amber, I only transfer zipped projects, using the File:Backup command.
My most typical procedure is to save to GD, then open the file on another machine.
Haven’t used a flash drive in some time, even though they are excellent devices.
Thanks all! I have printed out Amberv’s “alternative method” instructions and plan to test/use that today on a small short story project.
John
I’ve been testing out Google Drive and Scrivener between my Desktop and my Netbook by saving directly into a folder.The thing to look out for is making sure that after you save your project and close down Scrivener, Google Drive actually finishes syncing all the files. I’ve seen it hiccup a couple of times when I hadn’t closed Scrivener down after saving a project and made a couple of additional edits. In both cases, I resaved the project, exited Scrivener, and GD then synced successfully.
I would suggest dragging the Google Drive taskbar icon from ‘hidden icons’ and put it directly on the bar next to date/time so it can be checked quickly.
That “hidden” icon advice is excellent. It is just possible that my “losses” occurred because I did not right click on the GDrive icon and confirm the synch completed properly. I noticed today how doing so showed me a stalled synch with my Scrivener files.
My preference now is that “alternate method.” At least I know absolutely 100% that I have the latest iteration on one of my devices and can always go back and get it. That makes me inclined to just establish a routine where I unzip from the GDrive folder into My Documents with the overwrite option “on.” If I then open the project and find it is not current, I can smack my head and go to the other computer and get it. So far, it has worked pretty well. 
The only thing to watch out for is you don’t want to use Window’s folder merging tool to “update” a project in your Documents folders, from a zip. If you just drag “my project.scriv” from the Zip to replace the “my project.scriv” folder, what Windows actually does is copy in everything, overwriting with replace if you say to, but it doesn’t delete old stuff. So over time you can accumulate junk files.
Best practice is to move the old project in Documents to the recycle bin, then drag out a fresh copy from the Zip on GD. If that was a mistake, you can always undo it by getting the old one back out of the recycle bin.
THANK YOU! I am probably very old school. No dragging for me. 
Since I know that I have the project in its most current form on the hard-drive of the last machine I used, I unzip the backup on GDrive into the working directory I set up for the project on the other machine and choose the “overwrite” option. Using “7-Zip” today, I enjoyed successful tests.
Also, I do manual, not automatic backups, and I include the date/timestamp in the filename. With Scrivener, I have it ask me what project I want to open, rather than automatically opening the last project that was open.
Scrivener, as I use it more, I like it more.
John