Once upon a time, I installed the Google Drive desktop client on my MacBook Pro[1], only to discover shortly after that it had filled up my local storage on the laptop. That was my original, Intel-based MacBook that only had a 500GB SSD drive. It took me no time to figure out what exactly had gobbled up my storage on the device and even less time to resolve the problem. Had I not been able to put that two-and-two together quickly, I'd have run into some problems with that laptop. Fortunately, that was not the case.
Since then, I've been very careful about how the Google Drive Desktop client is configured on my laptops. Now it's time that I pass that information on to you, so you can avoid the same storage problem I once had.
I will assume that you already have the Google Drive Desktop Client installed on either macOS[2] or Windows[3] (please, Google, create an official client for Linux!) and have it linked to your Google Drive account. The desktop client installation is very simple for both platforms, so you shouldn't have any trouble getting it up and running and connected to Google Drive.
With that taken care of, let's see how we can avoid a storage nightmare.
Streaming vs mirroring
You must understand this most important concept for protecting your storage space with the Google Drive Client. Google offers two different types of sync with the client, which are:
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Stream files: all files are stored on Google Drive cloud only unless you open a file or make it available offline. All files that are either opened or made available offline will be stored in a virtual drive in your local storage.
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Mirror files: files are