When network drops, the virtual drive remains visible in Explorer but double-clicking a non-cached file shows a “File not found” error after 12 seconds. Users mistook this for file corruption. 5. Discussion 5.1 The Explorer Metaphor Breaks Windows Explorer assumes files are either present or absent, with deterministic open times. Google Drive’s “stream on open” violates the locality of reference expectation. Users expect a drive letter to behave like a USB drive or local disk. It does not.
Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_LogicalDisk | Where-Object $_.VolumeName -like "*Google Drive*" google drive in windows explorer
NASA-TLX scores for “effort” and “frustration” were significantly higher for the virtual drive than for a traditional sync folder (p < 0.05), despite users rating the idea of integration as “more modern.” When network drops, the virtual drive remains visible