I need to clean up my personal OneDrive to free up space and noticed i have several large stream.x86.x-none.dat files in my OneDrive folder. What are they and can i safely delete them? Here is an example of one and it is the largest file in my OneDrive folder. Drive File Stream is the best choice for most organizations. This feature lets users stream My Drive and Team Drive information directly from the cloud, that provides: Free disk space and good network bandwidth. Nov 24, 2020 Drive File Stream is basically a kind of Sync tool for desktop or we can say it is a replacement or alternative for the Backup and Sync app. This tool is mainly developed for G Suite users which means all the new features & functionalities of G Suite are integrated with this new program.
‘Google File Stream' and ‘Google Backup and Sync' are quite different even though they are both released by Google.
Google describes the differences as one being for ‘Personal' use and one for ‘Business'. That's not a bad summary. They do different things and it's important to understand the difference before you start using them. Google file stream is like an extra Hard Disk that lives in the cloud. Google backup and sync is more like Dropbox – a synced folder. Here's why you may like to install both side-by-side to benefit from what each one has to offer.
'Google File Stream'
Google File Stream is like a USB thumbdrive that lives in the cloud. It appears as an external Hard drive on your desktop. When you drag folders or files across to it files are not moved they are copied. When you copy a file to Google File Stream you now have 2 copies of the file, just like when you copy a file to an external Hard Disk or USB stick. Also your organisation controls part of your Google File Stream and they can choose to share certain ‘Team Drives' with you. So it's like a USB stick that comes with some pre-installed files. It's aimed more at an organisation than an individual.
The files on your Google File Stream are not backed up to time machine.
- feels are moved not copied
- your organisation can put files on your Google Drive
- it feels like a thumbdrive that is available from anywhere
- great for sharing files with different users across an organisation
- easy to publish files to the web
- files not available offline
- uses less internet quota because it only downloads the files as you need them
'Google backup and Sync'
Google backup and sync is folder based, it is like a synced folder. It shares a folder from your computer to the cloud. You can choose to share that folder to another computer as well. It will keep those two folders in sync. Think of it as a folder that happens to be shared. Because it is a folder it is backed up to your time machine backup like any other folder on your computer. Basically, it's Google's version of dropbox. (Read this article for how Google Backup and Sync is slightly different to Dropbox.)
I don't use Google backup and sync for this purpose because I find that Dropbox does what I need it to do. I have Backup and Sync install because it has a little extra feature whereby it can backup your desktop folder to the cloud, which is handy. It means you can access your desktop folder from anywhere online if you need to.
- feels are copied not moved
- it feels like any other folder
- you are in control of what files are in the folder
- great for syncing your own files across multiple computers
- also has an option to backup your desktop folder for access from the cloud
- files are available offline
- uses more internet quota because it syncs all files
How I use them.
I use Dropbox to sync files that I am working on (both personal and work) across my own desktop and laptop computers. (Talks I'm listening to, recipes, mainstage projects, my 1Password keychain, musescore files, pages documents etc. Especially files that I use regularly. It mainly consists of ‘project' folders. I try and clear it out regularly to only keep what I need in Dropbox.
I use Google File Stream for all official documents relating to our church, especially things that should stay with the organisation after I leave. Policy documents, admin files, movies. The nice thing about Google File Stream is that it doesn't download the files everywhere, so it doenst' clutter up everyone's internet bandiwdth or hard drive unless they acrually need to access a file.
I also use Google File Stream to publish files to the web. (eg here: http://dpc.org.au/music )
I use Google Backup and Sync kind of like an extension to dropbox. Blue star download for windows 10. It has a lot more space so I put big files there that I don't want to take up my Dropbox quota. I also use it to backup the desktop folder of my laptops.
Summary:
If you already use Dropbox, you probably don't need to use Google Backup and Sync, unless you want to sync a desktop folder or need more free space.
If you are finding that Dropbox is not quite powerful enough to share your files across a complex organisation, or you want to separate your work files from your personal ones, Google File Stream may be what you are after.
Related topics:
What are the differences between ‘Google Drive' (Google File Stream) and ‘Dropbox'?
-->A stream is a sequence of bytes. In the NTFS file system, streams contain the data that is written to a file, and that gives more information about a file than attributes and properties. For example, you can create a stream that contains search keywords, or the identity of the user account that creates a file.
Each stream that is associated with a file has its own allocation size, actual size, and valid data length:
- The allocation size is the amount of disk space that is reserved for a stream.
- The actual size is the number of bytes that are being used by a caller.
- The valid data length (VDL) is the number of bytes that are initialized from the allocation size for the stream.
Each stream also maintains its own state for compression, encryption, and sparseness. The FILE_ATTRIBUTE_SPARSE_FILE attribute on the file is set in the dwFileAttributes member of the WIN32_FIND_DATA structure returned from the FindFirstFile, FindFirstFileEx, and FindNextFile functions if any of the streams have ever been sparse. GetFileAttributes, GetFileAttributesEx, GetFileAttributesTransacted, GetFileInformationByHandle, and GetFileInformationByHandleEx return the sparse state of the default data stream if no stream is specified.
Xbox beta login. There are no file times associated with a stream. The file times for a file are updated when any stream in a file is updated.
Opportunistic locks are maintained per stream. Sharing modes are also maintained per stream. When delete access is requested on a file, the operating system checks for delete access on all open streams in a file. If another process has opened a stream without the FILE_SHARE_DELETE permission, you cannot open the file for delete access.
If a file being copied has a data stream and the network redirector is used, the file can only be copied if the client has both the read permission and the read attributes permission.
Naming Conventions for Streams
When specified from the Windows shell command line, the full name of a stream is 'filename:stream name:stream type', as in the following example: 'myfile.dat:stream1:$DATA'.
Any characters that are legal for a file name are also legal for the stream name, including spaces. For more information, see Naming a File. The stream type (also called an attribute type code) is internal to the NTFS file system. Users therefore can't create new stream types, but they can open existing NTFS file system types. Stream type specifier values always start with the dollar sign ($) symbol. See below for a list of stream types.
By default, the default data stream is unnamed. To fully specify the default data stream, use 'filename::$DATA', where $DATA is the stream type. This is the equivalent of 'filename'. You can create a named stream in the file using the file naming conventions. Note that '$DATA' is a legal stream name. For example, the full name of a stream named '$DATA' on a file named 'sample' would be 'sample:$DATA:$DATA'. If you created a stream named 'bar' on the same file its full name would be 'sample:bar:$DATA'.
What Is Google File Stream
When creating and working with files that have one-character names, prefix the file name with period followed by a backslash (.) or use a fully qualified path name. The reason to do this is that Windows treats one-character file names as drive letters. When a drive letter is specified with a relative path, a colon separates the drive letter from the path. When there is an ambiguity about whether a one-character name is a drive letter or a file name, Windows assumes it is a a drive letter if the string following the colon is a valid path, even if the drive letter is invalid. Sketchup technical drawing windows 10.
How To Use Google Stream
Stream Types
Following is the list of NTFS stream types, also called attribute type codes. Some of the stream types are internal to NTFS and their format is undocumented.
Stream Type | Description |
---|---|
::$ATTRIBUTE_LIST | Contains a list of all attributes that make up the file and identifies where each attribute is located. |
::$BITMAP | A bitmap used by indexes to manage the b-tree free space for a directory. The b-tree is managed in 4 KB chunks (regardless of cluster size) and this is used to manage the allocation of these chunks. This stream type is present on every directory. |
::$DATA | Data stream. The default data stream has no name. Data streams can be enumerated using the FindFirstStreamW and FindNextStreamW functions. |
::$EA | Contains Extended Attributes data. |
::$EA_INFORMATION | Contains support information about the Extended Attributes. |
::$FILE_NAME | The name of the file, in Unicode characters. This includes the short name of the file as well as any hard links. |
::$INDEX_ALLOCATION | The stream type of a directory. Used to implement filename allocation for large directories. This stream represents the directory itself and contains all of the data of the directory. Changes to streams of this type are logged to the NTFS change journal. The default stream name of an $INDEX_ALLOCATION stream type is $I30 so 'DirName', 'DirName::$INDEX_ALLOCATION', and 'DirName:$I30:$INDEX_ALLOCATION' are all equivalent. |
::$INDEX_ROOT | This stream represents root of the b-tree of an index. This stream type is present on every directory. |
::$LOGGED_UTILITY_STREAM | Similar to ::$DATA but operations are logged to the NTFS change journal. Used by EFS and Transactional NTFS (TxF). The ':StreamName:$StreamType' pair for EFS is ':$EFS:$LOGGED_UTILITY_STREAM' and for TxF is ':$TXF_DATA:$LOGGED_UTILITY_STREAM'. |
::$OBJECT_ID | An 16-byte ID used to identify the file for the link-tracking service. |
::$REPARSE_POINT | The reparse point data. |