Google Drive - help please.

google drive cloud storage .... I've unwittingly got it and don't think I want in.

I use google photos and, until recently, used picasa3 to upload. Picasa3 is being phased out and, although I'm still using it as a card-reader and photo viewer, it no longer uploads. No problem ... I just go (online) to Google Photos and pull rather than push. But only one photo at a time, which is fine most of the time. I was advised by a Google pop-up to use "Backup and Sync" next time, thought this would help when wanting to upload more than one so installed it.

This is where my problems started ... it uploaded everything on my pc to the Drive cloud 90% of which is unwanted rubbish. I've used 18 GB of my 15GB and they want me to upgrade. Presumably that means £. On top of this Google Photos has made all sorts of gibberish animated gifs. (All pics in Drive are also viewed in Photos - I think)

I can understand why many would want pics & docs in the clouds but a select few (100s not 1000s) in their chosen albums is all I need. I'd like to undo or delete google Drive and its contents without interfering with the pic that I placed/upload purposely in google Photos.

Help greatly appreciated.

Re: Google Drive - help please.

If your photos are taken with your phone they are synched to the photos section of your Google Drive automatically. You can prevent this by going to the photos App on your phone and in the pull-down menu at the top left select settings. On the sub-menu that appears touch Backup & sync and turn it off. Your photos will no longer synchronise to the photos section of your Google Drive. If you want to save individual photos to your drive, long press on one of the photos and a tick will appear on that photo. The remaining photos will have a little circle on them and if you touch that circle, a tick will appear. Place a tick in all the photos you want to save and touch the < (share) symbol at the top of the screen. In there, you should see your Google Drive. Select that to upload and save your photos.

If you go to online to your Google drive/photos, you can select the photos you wish to delete. Simply hover your mouse over one of the pictures and a tick will appear, click on the tick and all the other photos will have a circle, click inside the the circle of each photo you want to delete and then click on the dustbin. This will transfer the pictures to the Bin on your Google Drive.

To remove them permanently, go to your Google Drive and click on the Bin icon on the left. Your deleted files will be shown in a list. To empty the bin, click on the bin menu item above the list and select `Empty` from the pull-down menu.

Re: Google Drive - help please.

Thank you Judd, I'll get back to you on this.