Google Drive can be sync’d automatically with your My Documents. On Microsoft Windows systems My Documents (or just Documents on Vista/7/8) is the name of a special folder on the computer’s hard drive that the system commonly uses to store a user’s documents, music, pictures, downloads, and other files. If you want to automatically sync your My Documents to Google Drive  it’s simple to do.

Simple Redundancy with Google Drive

Google Drive can help you avoid Murphy’s Law by providing an online backup to for your files, including videos, photos, Google Docs, PDFs and beyond. Free accounts get 5GB of space and you can upgrade to 25GB for $2.49 a month. One hundred gigabytes of storage can be had for $4.99 a month, and 1TB will set you back $49.99 monthly. That’s a lot of backup for not much scratch.

In addition to storing your files, Google Drive you get features like anywhere availability. Google Drive is available on PC, Mac, and Android with Linux, iPhone, and iPad support coming soon. Collaboration is baked in too should you choose to use it since Google Docs integration is baked in with Google Drive so you can create new documents, spreadsheets and presentations instantly. Work together at the same time, on the same doc, and see changes as they appear; docs sent off Google Drive via GMail ensure everyone is working on the same file. Since this is Google… it’s tightly coupled with Google+ and of course has the power of search behind it. Perhaps one of the cooler features of Google Drive is that it tracks every change you make—so when you hit the save button, a new revision is saved. You can look back as far as 30 days automatically, or choose a revision to save forever.

How To: Sync your My Documents with Google Drive

While Google Drive is handy as it is, it’s installed by default to a location of it’s own.  However, with a small change in Windows you can have your default My Documents relocated INTO your Google Drive folder.

1. Open Windows Explorer. On the left hand navigation pane locate Libraries, then Documents. Click the arrow next to Documents and expand the tree to show My Documents.

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2. Right click on My Documents and select Properties. (image 1)

3. When the properties opens you’ll see tabs along the top, select the Location tab. Click the Move button and then navigate to the Google Drive folder and click the Select folder button.  Alternatively, you can create a My Documents folder within your Google Drive folder and then map just your documents to that one (this is what I’ve done to keep things nice and tidy). (image 2)

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4. Click the Move button and you’ll see a dialog asking you to confirm that you want to move the files to the new location. Click Yes for the confirmation message.

5. Celebrate that you now have your Documents sync’d to the cloud. You’ll also automatically sync your Documents from one computer to another (and/or to your phone) if installed on multiple computers.

Previously, I’d been saying that SugarSync is my go to online backup. For the time being  it still is because it will allow me to backup ANY folder anywhere I my computer without having to mess about with symbolc links. However, with Google’s inexpensive price I might soon be swayed. Google Drive comes with 5Gigs free to start. The upshot of other services like Dropbox, SugarSync, etc is that many offer ways you can increase your storage via referrals but if you’re not already using one then Google Drive is an excellent choice.