both me and the missus are sorted with small chromebooks now, both signed up for the 1Tb cloud storage too. i think it comes with a small amount of physical HD storage too 4Gb IIRC. thing is…..i just dont understand it.

ok, its all web based, i got google drive, if i go to that i see some old stuff on there from pre-chromebook times, dont know why theyre saved there. is google drive my ‘cloud storage’?

and if so, whats google+? and then theres also ‘sheets’, ‘docs’ and ‘slides’ apps, which i assume are where i would edit word, excel, powepoint files and then save back to ‘cloud’? but why arent they all in my google drive instead?

same with my photos. theyre in a seperate ‘google+ photos’ app that synced to my phone when i connected and now has all those pics in there. in the cloud again i assume, but not shown in my google drive.

and when i re-connected my phone to save recent photos, they dont show up in my photos, i cant seem to access them to save to my photos or cloud or drive or whatever >-(

and lastly, even if i sort out all this drive/cloud/g+ stuff, wheres the physical 4Gb drive on the chromebook? how do i access and save to that?

im loving the chromebook, suits my pc use perfectly, just want to understand the filing/saving system.

thanks a lot

EDIT: downloaded the airdroid app as google suggested that was a good way of managing phone/chromebook compatability, but it seems to imply its only windows/mac. anyone use it?

Google drive= your cloud storage (so if you had stuff previously it will.still be there)

Google+= googles answer to Facebook(kind of) and your one stop shop for logging I to stuff.

Google docs, sheet etc= your office suite and you can work offline.

Photos=your photo storage, if you have google+ you get more photo storage. If you have an android phone get it to automatically back your photos up to google photos.

To access your hard drive you click on the files app.

Airdroid fire up the app when you are connected to your WiFi. Type in the address your.phone gives you in chrome AMD boom you’re in. Sign in with your google+ account (no new sign up needed) and go crazy transferring stuff.

I am a Chromebook convert.

Ah that’s a bit clearer then thanks. Do you know how to access the 4Gb internal drive? And also just thought…… Ok Google + photos is like ‘Facebook’ type photo storage, how does picasaweb fit into all this which is also Google photo storage and also has a load of my photos stored there?

Thanks

EDIT: just seen your HD edit 🙂

“is google drive my ‘cloud storage’?”

Yes.

“whats google+?”

It’s Google’s attempt at social media/Facebook.
It’s also how you share documents/photos.

“then theres also ‘sheets’, ‘docs’ and ‘slides’ apps,”

These are Google Docs.

but why arent they all in my google drive instead?”

They should also be in Google drive (Mine are) – and will sync to the drive as you edit them on the Chromebook . The search function in Google drive should allow you to find the document you’re looking for.

same with my photos. theyre in a seperate ‘google+ photos’ app that synced to my phone when i connected and now has all those pics in there. in the cloud again i assume, but not shown in my google drive.
“and when i re-connected my phone to save recent photos, they dont show up in my photos, i cant seem to access them to save to my photos or cloud or drive or whatever >-(“

Don’t know. They should be there though. I access my photos this way: https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/myphotos?noredirect=1
That said I find the way Google+ has taken over my photos to be very irritating.

“and lastly, even if i sort out all this drive/cloud/g+ stuff, wheres the physical 4Gb drive on the chromebook? how do i access and save to that?”

Click the apps button on the bottom left of the CB screen and search “files”. This will bring up the app which shows you where the files are. Or use the keyboard shortcut Alt+Shift+M.
More here: https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/1056323?hl=en

To access it there should be an app called files. Click on that and it will show you your “google drive” “downloads” and “offline” files.

OK google is a better version of Apples ‘Siri’ instead of typing you just ask it.

Picasa = old hat. Your photos are still there but google+ is the new home for.your photos. Like Picasa you can keep your albums private or share them.

Great stuff thanks. And what’s the procedure for storing new photos/vids from phone? Should it just sync when I connect phone as it did the first time? Or do I need to point them at something? And how would I choose whether to save on HD offline or cloud?

Thanks

I ‘think’ it just uploads straight from to your google+ (I sync via WiFi straight to the cloud)

Grrrrr…… Installed Google+ on phone, don’t understand it. The photos section didn’t have my latest photos on so somehow I managed to sync but I think all photos have been ‘shared’ with my family? There’s some pics I don’t want them to see 🙂 how do I keep them all private?

EDIT: apparently they’re still not on my Google+? Just been on there yet latest photos still not there. I went into gallery on phone, share, Google+, then family was default. So I think my gallery has sent pics to family yet theyre still not in my Google+. Totally bamboozled at the mo :-/

How do you make a backup of your Google “cloud”?

It rains onto a hard drive.

erm

sharing is sharing

syncing is syncing

go to photos app in android, settings, then auto-backup (and you can choose to backup or not, via wifi only, etc.)

sometimes I’ve had to make it sync manually (mainly on HTC gingerbread rather than nexus5 Lollipop)

It rains onto a hard drive.

On 4Gb Chromebook?

How do you make a backup of your Google “cloud”?

i dont know how to do this. didnt know the cloud needed backing up.

It rains onto a hard drive.

i dont understand that

sharing is sharing

syncing is syncing
ok, ill look for syncing shortly, but for now how do i stop sharing all my photos with people? how can i see whats being shared now and amend that?

go to photos app in android, settings, then auto-backup (and you can choose to backup or not, via wifi only, etc.)

i dont have that option in my gallery settings…. im on a rooted phone, android 4.2.2?

thanks

On 4Gb Chromebook?

External HDD 😆 not much of a backup if its on the machine(not that it’s possible).

i dont know how to do this. didnt know the cloud needed backing up.

I was being arsey. No of course you don’t need to back it but you are relying on someone else looking after all your precious data for you. I don’t like the idea.

ok, ive been experimenting for a day or so before posting back up, and am getting on quite well i think. theres still some things i dont understand tho so ill fire away……

firstly, what i did was connect my phone and it took a while to ‘upload photos’. thats fine. then for some reason it said it was backing everything up (1,500 odd files). this took all day and some of the night and i wasnt sure what was happening so just let it do its thing. ive now got in google= photos, every single photo ive ever took and have ever been online, even tho i thought it was just taking photos from my phone.
wheres it got all my historical photos from? cant remember putting them on picasa, (altho its possible i did), and my gmail isnt linked to facebook (and theres only limited pics on facebook too). so just wondering where it got them all from. im talking of pics that were taken on 2007 and id forgotten all about!

ive got on well with the ‘sharing’ thing. i worked out that google= photos will show every single pic seperately in ‘photos’ and then collectively in ‘albums’. i played around deleting stuff, renaming albums, sharing with family, thats all going great.

questions id like answering so far then are….

1. where did it pull all those ancient pics from?

2. i deleted a load of photos from ‘photos’, and hoped that i would then be left with an empty album in ‘albums’, but the photos were still there and i had to delete the album too before theyd gone. that sound right? id have thought once i delete a photo its gone and cant appear still in its album.

3. i went through a load of albums, changed the share settings from ‘me only’ to ‘share with family’, but theres one album that just wont share. i keep going back to it between sharing others but it just hangs, doesnt say it wont share or anything, but just hangs the chromebook so nothings happening. any idea why that may be?

4. why did all my photos upload, then back up? where did the back up go? took ages to do, but no idea where this back up is.

5. i assumed id be able to see the photos as files in google drive, but i cant. it just shows random files. if i hover over the ‘storage’ in ‘drive’ it shows drive (5Gb), Gmail (359Mb) and google+ photos (1Gb). ok that maybe tells me that everything is still adding up and using my 1Tb allowance, but no photos, word docs, excel sheets etc will appear in drive. theyll be in their own docs, sheets, photos app. that right?

6. ive got thousands of photos in g+ photos. shouldnt that add up to more than the 1Gb that it shows in drive?

7. i assume that once i ‘share’ my pics with my family, they can view them on their pc’s. how do they do this? through their gmail? or do they need google+? ive only got it cos of my chromebook, how do they look at pics from a windows laptop?

8. offline stuff. went to ‘files’ to see what ive got on my physical 4Gb HD on chromebook. it took me to the downloads folder within google drive. fair enough, but theres different files in ‘offline’ folder also within google drive. what files are actually on my chromebook? the downloads folder files? offline folder files? both? what if i plugged a usb drive into chromebook and tried to transfer say a music file to it? where would that go?

9. in g+ photos, i click settings, it tells me im using 4.5Gb local storage, if i have any more photos or vids to upload, use a USB device etc etc. how can i be using any local storage? theyre all online arent they? plus i only get 4Gb local storage anyway, and some of thats used by my various files in ‘files’. can anyone explain what that means?

thatll do for now 🙂 apologies for all that ^^^ but id really like to understand this properly. im certainly getting there, i understand the circles thing now, the difference between drive and g+ and sharing, but as you can see theres still a lot to learn!

thanks

I wont answer any of the photo stuff as a) I dont use “Photos” b) I dont use Google+ and c) I still use Picasa with “?noredirect=1” to continue to manage the photos I want my way (And I dont allow “Backup” of photos either as you end up with tons of dated albums of crap)

But….

8 ) “Downloads” is your local drive. Stuff you Download is there for you.

Offline in google drive are local sycnhro’d version of your most recently opened GOOGLE (ONLY!) docs/sheets/slides which you can ropen and edit etc locally while offline. The sycn is done automatically.

Some apps (gmail offline) will also store offline sync’d images on your local drive too, but you wont navigate to those.

Yes, you can insert an SD card or USB drive and it will show up in the “Files” app (blue square icon in your app drawer) much as your google drive arch and your Downloads folder stuff. Pin it to your bottom bar as it’s basically like “Explorer” in Windows and you can nav to google files online using it instead of google drive though the browser if you want. This is one of the best things about the Chromebook because you can attached files directly from gdrive to emails using he attachment icon in gmail, taking you via the “Files” dialogue box on the Chromebook.

thanks mate. anyone use g+photos and can help with any of the other questions?

I once heard of some chap using G+, but I think it was just a myth 😉

For all the amazing stuff Google do, it’s still astounding that they ran with the abomination that is Google+ for so long. Fortunately the dick in charge of it has been fired and there’s a quiet acceptance that they wont make it the backbone of the google world as initially planned. Thank god. It still gets in the way, but you can for the most part ignore it (even if you are still compelled to sign up to it to access some stuff) for enterprise users.

1. no clue. they must have been somewhere.
2. sounds odd. can’t say I’ve noticed that. I delete a pic, and it’s gone, although more often I’ll move a pic else where, usually because it’s an occasional android phone photo that’s synced to its own album, and i want it filed somewhere.
3. i’m guessing “share with family” is the G+ circle? (I don’t share usually, and don’t use the predefined circles, only categorised ones I made myself).
4. no clue
5a. photos you usually see in picasaweb or google+ or from android in the photos or whatever it is now app. I tend to do 99% of my photos from a real camera and access via picasaweb interface rather than G+, but the photo store is the same either way.
5b. docs and drive were kind of the same thing. docs (sheet, word, etc.) are stored in the the drive, but sort of open in a different app only in the sense that if you click a spreadsheet it’s going to open the sheets app. but it’s all the same drive.
6. dunno
7. same as 3. I’m guessing that’s the G+ circle (don’t have my CB handy so can’t check).

G+ is slowly becoming a bit more active. In a way, more like twitter with photos. And youtube is half linked to it too.
But it’s never going to have the critical mass of facebook. And most of what’s in my feed is a repeat of what they tweeted in twitter.

been at this still for a while now trying to suss it, and found the answer to (7)

if you share an album with someone, they can only view it when they go to your ‘profile’ in their own gmail/google+
once your profile is on their screen they can choose ‘photos’ and look at whats public or shared with you.

the hunt for the other answers continues……

just a bit of a bump cos im still struggling with this. havent found the answers to any of the above yet, and id also be grateful if someone could explain this please…….

i took a photo with my phone, of something i want to sell on facebook. i plugged it into chromebook, cos my google+ photos are set to import photos when connected. nothing. ok, back to the phone. not in that ‘photos’ app either (its google+ photos on my phone, same logo).
go to my phones gallery, and its there. p*ss about about with uploads and sync, dont really know what im doing, but now the photo is in my google+ photos on phone.
yet when i go to it on my chromebook, still nothing, just the old photos still. tried syncing again, nothing new.

if ive got the photo in my g+ photos, shouldnt every device that im signed onto show it, as theyre all ‘in the cloud’?