Google Drive – How to Download a Huge Folder

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I have a folder shared with me on Google Drive that is much larger than 2 GB. When I try to download it Drive zips the folder but stops when the file size of the zip archive is larger than 2GB.

How can I download this huge folder from Google Drive?

Best Answer

Use the open source command-line tool drive to sync the whole folder to your local hard disk recursively, downloading the contained files recursively instead of in one huge ZIP archive.

Use a command like this:

drive pull "Google Drive Folder Name to Download"

This will download only changes and new files, so a one-way sync from remote to local. It will ask for confirmation after presenting what would change.

Google Apps files (Google Docs, Google Sheets etc.) will be included only as *.desktop files with links to their online versions, since their native format is not accessible. However, you can also tell the command to include exported versions of Google Apps files (which it will do whenever detecting a new or changed Google Apps file):

drive pull -export=docx,xlsx,pptx,svg "Folder Name"

For more information, see drive help pull.

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