1

I have a personal Google Drive account and two laptops. Is it possible to use the Google Drive desktop client on both laptops? For example, when I’m on Laptop 1, I want to be able to save files, and when I’m on Laptop 2, I should also be able to save files. If I edit a file on Laptop 1, it should sync to Laptop 2, and vice versa. The sync should happen automatically on both laptops.

4 Spice ups
2

That’s the whole point of the app.

So long as you use the same account on both and both are signed in, the sync will do exactly that.

Personal and business do not operate any different in function, that’s about capacity and SLAs, but they do the same job.

This also applies to OneDrive personal and business, Nextcloud/Owncloud and their respective sync apps too.

1 Spice up
3

Yup. That’s what it’s made for

1 Spice up
4

But can we know whet is your question ?

By right the sync would happen randomly between 1 hr to 6 hrs unless there are changes of the files, locally. Else the sync will happen when the machines boot up or receive Internet connection…

For example if you edit and save the file (xls or doc or ppt), after you save, the file should immediately sync to the cloud.
But on the 2nd machine, it may not sync as the client software did not detect the “changes” and not sync immediately (assuming both machines were powered up).

But there is this “danger” when 2 more more people are editing xls (or doc or pptx) at the same time as the GDDC only syncs saved files as these are not Google Sheets or Google Docs…coz the file is not updated in both session in real time and both cannot see what is being updated.

5

The question is, can they use the Google app on multiple machines and have the files sync so they are available on both devices - it’s the first line.

Not much of a sync if this were true.

Both Google and Microsoft services are real-time or near real-time syncs with checks for file modifications every few minutes.

Worst case, they can open the webclient and view files there.

6

Google drive is meant to be web-based. So unless you force them to be stored locally there are storage location is in the cloud and can be accessed by any machine that logs in to that email address anywhere forever.

7

What I mean by that in more detail is you have to choose to “make files available offline” or they are stored only in the cloud, thus accessible by any machine logged into that account