How to get Rclone to backup "Computer" backups from Google Drive to OneDrive?

So, I have setup a copy from Google Drive (‘My Drive’) to OneDrive with the following parameters and it’s working as expected. However, I see no option to have RClone copy the local computer backups located under ‘Computers’.

Is that a separate switch in the command line that I need to run to target these additional ‘Computer’ backups in RClone? I read online about setting the ‘rootID’ of my Google Drive?

When I run the ‘rclone lsd gdrive:’ command, I can only see ‘My Drive’, I don’t see the backups/folders under ‘Computers’.

This is the command line I’m running for the ‘My Drive’ copy operations, it’s averaging about 10GB/hour, so I have roughly 45-48 hours left (~450GB of data to copy):

rclone copy gdrive: onedrive: --progress --log-file=rclone.log --log-level=INFO --transfers=8 --checkers=8 --drive-chunk-size=64M --retries=10 --retries-sleep=10s --low-level-retries=20 --ignore-existing

I’m running 1.73.2, 64-bit edition for Windows 11.

My source is Google Drive and my destination is Microsoft OneDrive.

If I can’t get this to work, is the next best option to manually download the ‘Computers’ backups and upload them to OneDrive or use Google Takeout and upload the .zip files?

Thanks for any guidance that you can provide.

Shannon

What I would suggest is make a duplicate copy of your remote config, and add:

root_folder_id = 1XyfxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxKHCh

where 1XyfxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxKHCh is the id of one of your "Computers", from the browser URL (like https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1XyfxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxKHCh). See docs.

If I recall correctly, root_folder_id can only point to one "computer" at a time, and cannot also point to your main drive while pointing to a "computer". However, as a workaround you can create separate remotes for each and then combine them into one tree with a combine remote.

There is an analagous example detailed here:

Google does not expose the my computer's area to the API that rclone uses.

Instead of backing up the data with Google Drive back it up with rclone.

You can try:

4. :check_mark: Reconfigure the source machine (cleanest long-term)

On the original PC:

Move the backup location into a folder inside My Drive

Instead of “Computers”

Now everything becomes:

Fully mountable

Fully accessible from all tools

Here is the process:

https://share.note.sx/p9hewmn8#m6Mgp8bfMM/PnfYBqNGyVzE+XeDsLn1zDnh2ppBSUOM�

Why Google doesn’t allow pointers

Google treats “Computers” as a backup vault, not a normal Drive folder.

They intentionally prevent:

Sharing

Shortcuts

API access

Third-party tools

Moving the root

Linking from My Drive

It’s a walled garden by design.