Dvc add external with gdrive

I’m just starting out with dvc. I have a bunch of file and models that are saved on my drive. I’d like to add them to dvc without having to download them and then re-adding them. I thought maybe dvc add --external gdrive:/// but it says it can’t find it. Is this a problem with my gdrive link setup (I am using a service account) or with --external not supporting gdrive?
Thanks

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Hi @randywreed! Unfortunately, GDrive doesn’t support --external yet. But to be honest, I’m not sure it the best option in your case. Could you please clarify, what is the most concerning thing to you in downloading them first- performance/time, or something else (like lack of human readable file names after regular dvc add)?

I’ve got some models that are 256mb. And a lot of little csvs. But maybe that’s not a big deal. I’ll try it and see how it goes.

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@randywreed Btw, we know that people sometimes mistakingly use --external for such purpose, because dvc doesn’t currently have a built-in feature to transfer/copy data straight to remote/cache, so you have to manually download/dvc add/dvc push by hand. We’ve been talking about introducing such features for a long time, but just didn’t get to them yet. Here is a ticket https://github.com/iterative/dvc/issues/4520 for it, please like/comment/subscribe to that issue, so you are notified on the progress and so we can see that there is interest from the users :slightly_smiling_face: