Running Easyslides via GoogleDrive

[montyb50]

Hi,
For some years now we have been using Easyslides at our church via a USB 3 memory stick which contained a copy of the ‘EasyslidesData’ folder& combined it with a batch file (.BAT) to copy the folder contents from the memory stick to the PC/laptop Data drive (D). This has meant that I can have Easyslides on my home PC (mirroring the one on the church PC), create the service schedule, add new items, images, media files, etc, when finished the batch file copies the folder back to the memory stick. which I could take to church on Sunday, run another batch file to copy the memory stick EasyslidesData folder to the church PC & it was ready for Sunday service.
Whichever PC I am on, when Easyslides is running, it is using the PCs D drive ‘EasyslidesData’ folder location; this is so that there is no lag loading videos or mp3s from the USB stick.
The batch files contains several instructions:
– a ROBOCOPY command for the data copying (memory stick to D Drive), this also purges items that had been deleted, (so the 3 drives containing an EasyslidesData folder were always the same)
– launch Easyslides
– hold (Keep) the batch file open until Easyslides is closed
– when Easyslides closes, Another ROBOCOPY to copy EasyslidesData folder back to the memory stick.
It works beautifully.

One thing with this process that always worried me was what if the memory stick failed, was lost or became damaged, we wouldn’t have the service schedule or new items to use!
I thought about adding a small server to the church network, but that would need to be running all the time & have security implications.

Our minister loves using Google Drive to add files to for distribution, so I started to think whether we could use Google drive for the EasyslidesData folder & I have found we can.
Google have a ‘Google Drive for Desktop; exe that can be installed & once logged into the correct Google account it will add Google drive as another drive (letter) to ‘My PC’, in effect a network drive.
I have added the desktop exe to several PCs & laptops including the church PC, on each device I logged into a Google account I use for church only & set up the Google Drive with the same drive letter (G) on each device.
First I Copied the EasyslidesData folder to the “My Drive” folder on Google Drive
Then I made changes the Easyslides Batch file to Copy the ‘G’ Drive copy of EasyslidesData to the PC D drive & back to the G after closing Easyslides.
Before using it at church, I have tested it with another laptop at home – open ES on 1st device & make changes then close it, open ES on the 2nd device, check it includes the changes.
make new changes, close it
reopen the 1st ES, etc. all good.
The final test was go to church & see how it performs.
It has worked faultlessly for the last 2 Sundays.
As before, each PC uses the EasyslidesData folder from its D drive.
As long as the Broadband doesn’t go down all is good
I might add in failsafe to the batch file to copy to the memory stick as well…just in case

Happy to share if anyone may find this useful.
Blessings

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