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holstein13

macrumors newbie
Mar 31, 2018
18
2
Running Big Sur (11.1) on a Macbook Air M1. I got Backup and Sync to work as follows:
1) Installed Backup and Sync

What, exactly, do you mean by "Installed Backup and Sync"? Did you simply move the app into the application folder? Did you start it in any way?
 

alecbarr90

macrumors newbie
Dec 19, 2020
2
0
To be clearer: I’m running 11.2 Beta and it’s not working, in all the same ways as everyone else here says.
 

holstein13

macrumors newbie
Mar 31, 2018
18
2
I have finally given up and found a workaround. I moved the "Google Drive" folder off my M1 machine and onto my Synology server. I now save my files locally on the mounted Synology network drive and use Synology's "Cloud Sync" to keep the files synced on Google. That handles my home use of Google Drive.

When I work and travel, I use my Intel-based MBP and have no plans to upgrade that until Google fixes the backup and sync app.
 

VitoBotta

macrumors 6502a
Dec 2, 2020
888
347
Espoo, Finland
I just switched Dropbox to the yearly plan to save a few bucks. Before doing that, I checked the pricing for Google storage even though Drive is a lot slower than Dropbox; I thought that because I am already paying for Google Workspace if it's more convenient I would switch back to Google once they sort out the software for M1. However I was shocked when I saw the pricing for adding extra storage to a single Google Workspace user!! I have a subscription for the Business Starter plan and I pay 6 bucks per user that includes 30GB of storage. If I bump that to say 2TB on my own user account to match the storage I have with Dropbox, it would cost a whopping 134 euros!! :D Buy more Drive storage for users - Google Workspace Admin Help

This is ridiculous. With the same company and service, if instead of just adding storage you upgrade the license for all users to the 12 bucks per month each, you get the same amount of storage per user. Are they nuts or what? So I'd have to upgrade all my users adding 6 bucks each, and the total would be a lot more expensive for me to just keep Dropbox at 9 bucks per month (paid annually).
 

wbeebe

macrumors newbie
Dec 20, 2020
1
0
Open finder and go to the following folder: ~/Library/Application Support/Google
  1. Delete the "Drive" folder there
  2. Move the Backup & Sync app to the trash
  3. Empty the trash folder
  4. Download and Reinstall the Backup & Sync app
  5. Note that at this point I went through the steps to setup the app from the beginning, but got the same error.
  6. Support asked me to restart my MBA - this was my first full system restart.
  7. After restart I went through the setup steps again and everything with the app started working fine. It did a merge to avoid duplicating files, but everything is working fine now.

The solution works for me as well. I did all the steps except step 1, multiple times and it never worked.

I thought the OP made a mistake and meant the absolute path of `/Library/App Support/....` but the OP is correct, it's a hidden folder in your _user_ directory. To get there you can use the menu in finder, Go -> Go to Folder and type "~/Library" and then you'll be navigated to the correct folder.

There must be a race condition somewhere in OSX that requires the hard delete of this folder, but I do believe that if those it's not working for _do_ delete the above folder and restart, that things will be peachy.
 

alchemistics

macrumors member
Dec 27, 2018
87
85
Switzerland
Backup and Sync doesn‘t work on my M1 MacBook.

I never liked it before. It doesn‘t remember indexing, therefore it indexes forever because I have a trillion of files.

In search of a solution I found insync. https://www.insynchq.com/
Being hesitant first because of the more „linuxish“ UI I already passed this before.

Now I was forced to use something else. I need selective sync, link sharing etc.
insync runs great since. So great I‘m going to replace Backup and Sync even on all my intel macs.

I do the rest with rsync, but this is just for separate backups I‘m doing.
I‘m in no way affiliated with insync, I‘m sure there are other similar tools on the Market.
Haven‘t found something better for Google Drive yet than it.

Hope this helps.
 

stonguse

macrumors newbie
Dec 20, 2020
1
0
Registered just to note that this was broken when I got my M1 Mini. Had tried a few of the tricks to get it to work but nothing worked yet.
After 11.1 was installed, I deleted backup and sync and reinstalled it (logged in via web not app) and it's working.
 

Dhock_Holiday

macrumors regular
Sep 17, 2019
191
203
Even with the newer version its still finicky. I still see some random crashes and in some cases it won't sync the folder icons properly.
 

daihard

macrumors 6502a
Feb 19, 2008
973
7
Seattle, WA
This...

Open finder and go to the following folder: ~/Library/Application Support/Google
  1. Delete the "Drive" folder there
  2. Move the Backup & Sync app to the trash
  3. Empty the trash folder
  4. Download and Reinstall the Backup & Sync app
  5. Note that at this point I went through the steps to setup the app from the beginning, but got the same error.
  6. Support asked me to restart my MBA - this was my first full system restart.
  7. After restart I went through the setup steps again and everything with the app started working fine. It did a merge to avoid duplicating files, but everything is working fine now.

Points 5 & 6 are key. After reinstalling, the error stills occurs, BUT full reboot worked. On restart, Google login window appeared immediately and files are now downloading.

Hopefully, that's a wrap!
Thank you SO much for the super helpful information! My wife had the exact same issue with Backup & Sync on her new M1 MBP. This resolved her problem.
 

s66

Suspended
Dec 12, 2016
472
661
Hmm, all of my work and most of my personal files reside on GD. Hoping this gets fixed reliably before my MBA arrives. Ta for the heads up.
Not convinced it's a smart move to let Google have access to all your personal files.
 

enzuccio1110

macrumors newbie
Dec 28, 2020
1
1
Followed the steps in #11 by [B]cemetry_gates[/B] with a couple of modifications. Worked great for me:

Open finder and go to the following folder: ~/Library/Application Support/Google
  1. Delete the "Drive" folder there
  2. Move the Backup & Sync app to the trash
  3. Empty the trash folder
  4. Download and Reinstall the Backup & Sync app
  5. DO NOT LAUNCH BACKUP & SYNC YET
  6. Restart your Mac
  7. Mac might ask you about security of downloading an app. If so, allow the Backup & Sync App
  8. DO NOT LAUNCH BACKUP & SYNC YET (2nd time)
  9. Restart your Mac
  10. Launch Backup & Sync this time.
  11. Like [B]cemetry_gates[/B], everything with the app started working fine after this. I also chose to Merge to avoid duplicating files.
I felt safer doing two restarts before launching. Maybe it was overly cautious, but after seeing that [B]cemetry_gates[/B] still had errors, that's what I decided to do. Good luck!
I LOVE U!!Thanks a lot
I tried all the solutions in this discussion without results, yours is the only that worked for me! i have a mba 2020 11.1 version!

Immagine 28-12-20 alle 16.28.JPG
 
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harrisonjr98

macrumors 6502
Dec 15, 2019
345
200
So I know people were having issues early on with Google Backup and Sync. According to a blog post for the latest update, it should be ironed out now. Because of how important some of my Drive data is, I just held off entirely for a native version so I was excited to rush and download it now that it's "fixed" only to find - according to Activity Monitor - that it's still running through Rosetta.

Can anyone who was having issues confirm that they're all fixed now? Is there really no native ARM build planned for the near future, only bandaids for the x86 build to hopefully not mess up?
 

Deadtime

macrumors newbie
Dec 16, 2020
7
10
So I know people were having issues early on with Google Backup and Sync. According to a blog post for the latest update, it should be ironed out now. Because of how important some of my Drive data is, I just held off entirely for a native version so I was excited to rush and download it now that it's "fixed" only to find - according to Activity Monitor - that it's still running through Rosetta.

Can anyone who was having issues confirm that they're all fixed now? Is there really no native ARM build planned for the near future, only bandaids for the x86 build to hopefully not mess up?
I've been running Backup and Sync on an M1 macbook air since December (prior to the latest update), and haven't noticed any issues.

And yes, the current (3.54) version of the application is still Intel (not Apple Silicon or Universal).
 

harrisonjr98

macrumors 6502
Dec 15, 2019
345
200
I've been running Backup and Sync on an M1 macbook air since December (prior to the latest update), and haven't noticed any issues.

And yes, the current (3.54) version of the application is still Intel (not Apple Silicon or Universal).
It's weird to me that they would explicitly word it in their changelog as "support for Apple M1 chip." It's not really support just because they've made the x86 binary more stable or whatever. :rolleyes: Classic Google -guess I'll be giving it a shot anyway. I hope it's easy to transition to an AS/Universal binary (as far as the Finder integration and having my drive files downloaded locally) - that's why I was holding off.
 

harrisonjr98

macrumors 6502
Dec 15, 2019
345
200
Has anyone heard if Google plans a true M1 port for Backup and ync?
I imagine they’ll ship a Universal binary at some point, but as for the timeline I’d say their confident wording about the x86 version in that recent update means we could be waiting quite a while. For what it’s worth, the most recent x86 build has actually been more stable for me than B&S on windows.
 

leons

macrumors 6502a
Apr 22, 2009
662
344
I imagine they’ll ship a Universal binary at some point, but as for the timeline I’d say their confident wording about the x86 version in that recent update means we could be waiting quite a while. For what it’s worth, the most recent x86 build has actually been more stable for me than B&S on windows.
Yes, stable, but still using a lot of unnecessary resources via Rosetta. :-(
 
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