Can rclone access "Backups" in Google drive?

Help and Support
1

What is the problem you are having with rclone?

Hi everyone, I'm trying to find there's a way to download backups from "backups" folder in Google Drive. In the browser the URL is drive/google.com/drive/u/0/backups. This folder is created from Android phone. rclone lsd gdrive: shows me the folders in the drive itself just fine, just not that backup folder. I tried various clones but not helpful (to my needs). That might not be possible but still hoping.

Run the command 'rclone version' and share the full output of the command.

rclone v1.57.0
 - os/version: raspbian 10.7 (64 bit)
 - os/kernel: 4.19.0-13-amd64 (x86_64)
 - os/type: linux
 - os/arch: amd64
 - go/version: go1.17.2
 - go/linking: static
 - go/tags: none

Which cloud storage system are you using? (eg Google Drive)

Google Drive

The command you were trying to run (eg rclone copy /tmp remote:tmp)

rclone lsd gdrive:

Config and version also available at pi@raspberry:~ $ rclone versionrclone v1.57.0- os/version: raspbian 10.7 (64 - Pastebin.com

By the way, I love this tool!

2

Is it a team drive?

Missing a debug log sadly.

Can you share the output of rclone lsd gdrive: -vvv?

What's the output of the WebGUI? You see all the folders there and that?

3

Apologies for not being specific. Backup folder in the Google Drive is quite special - it behaves in very different ways: 1) You can't upload there, it's handled by your Android device 2) It's not listed under the "My drive" folder and you need to access it in different way.

drive
drive1248×810 79.7 KB
. In the attached screenshot folders under the "My Drive" are perfectly displayed with rclone - there's nothign wrong with that hence no debug.
I'm not sure if rclone even can get to that "Backup" folder.

anyway:
Is it a team drive?

4

If I navigate to https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/backups I can indeed see backups of my android phone - who knew!

Rclone will be able to use that directory provided you can find its ID - I searched through the network transactions for 5 minutes without finding it though.

5

@ncw - thank you! I had fun session with web console and failed - not really surprising considering my knowledge :slight_smile:

6

It looks like it is possible - in this thread: https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-download-WhatsApp-backup-from-Google-drive-to-PC they talk about [OFFICIAL] Tenorshare UltData for Android: Your Best Android Data Recovery without Root which appears to be able to do it...

I wonder how it works and whether we can get that into rclone somehow?

7

API: Introduction to Google Drive API  |  Google Developers. But from that I only understood it's not accessing that special backup folder - my gut feeling is another API, not really public. Or perhaps for premium. But as I can barely read any code, I won't be able to help much further, unfortunately :confused:

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