With an hour or two to spare and the New Year approaching, I thought I would tidy up Google Drive.
I thought I was a Backup & Sync user but, apparently, “Over the coming months Backup and Sync will prompt you to move to the Drive For Desktop application.” Optionally, “In June 2021, Google announced that Google Workspace would be available “for everyone” with a Google Account”.
Fair enough, but how do I find out which application I’m a user of … 
I decided to download Drive For Desktop, anyway … when I did, the installer told me that “A newer version of Google Drive is already installed.” so I guess that I’m already using DFD … 
Just some information. I back my computer up to a 2T byte solid state drive. The drive is about the size of a cell phone. The only thing I use Google Drive for is photos and only if it is my only means of saving the data. I don’t trust anyone with storage of my personal data except me. I know how that might sound ridiculous in this day and time. However, It gives me comfort knowing that my info is sitting on my desk and not on someone else’s drive. 
it only updates when Chrome updates and the latest version of Chrome is 96.0.4664.110
AFAIK, Google Drive is a separate product from Google Chrome.
Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser.
Google Drive is a file storage and synchronization service.
My version of Drive is Google Drive is 54.0.2.0.
Google offers many services which I find useful. Google Drive offers me 15GB of space which I use for “non-essential” data. Since I have 2 PCs in sync, this means that I have 3 copies of such data (2 on 4TB EHDs).
“Essential” data is mostly (but not all) retained on MS OneDrive, which offers me 1TB of space which I use for “essential” data. Since I have 2 PCs in sync, this means that I have 3 copies of such data (2 On 4TB EHDs).
Everything on the PCs is backed up daily - I use Macrium Reflect - onto an additional 2 x 4TB EHDs.
I’m about to do the same.
A friend who works in IT always comments, that unless you have something backed up in at least two other locations, then it is obviously something you do not mind loosing.
Personally, I have about 8 different places that I back various things up to. I don’t save evrything to anyone cloud or drive.
Long before PCs, I worked on mainframes where the minimum kept was three copies of data - grandfather, father, son (in local and remote fireproof locations) - but where system backups retained much, much more.
Anything (photos mostly) that I want to keep long term I put on Verbatim DVD-R 4.7GB 8X UltraLife Gold Archival Grade. That way they don’t take up room. I have multiple EHDs, but I don’t want them cluttered. They each serve a specific purpose. I haven’t lost anything in the past.
Except a Gmail account, back in the early 2000s. I got drunk, one of the very few times for me and being drunk I got smart and changed my password, making it 16 characters. In the morning I couldn’t remember a bloody thing.
I though DVDs had gone the same way as VCs and 16mm …
I must get stuck into it, my desktop keeps telling me that Google Backup and Sync needs updating to Drive. I have bothered because there are only a few files backed up by Google
