Google recently upgraded its Drive service by adding a simple checkbox, and now storage and photography services on the cloud doubled in usefulness.

By using the new checkbox, users can select the specific Drive folders that are synchronized to their Macs or PCs running on Windows. There are two notable reasons why the upgrade is important: one, it saves a lot of space and two, it also unlocks the full potential of Google Photos.

The storage space will be tremendously handy for owners of computers who only have SSD drives. These hard disk drives are as fast as lightning, but usually come in small sizes, making Google Drive the go-to place for large storage.

To sync the cloud storage with the hard drive in great detail, go into Google Drive's preferences and open the "sync options" tab. Make sure to check all the folders that you want to send to Drive. There you go, you just saved a significant amount of storage space!

Keeping track of your saved space is easy, as the new feature helps you calculate the dimension of each folder, as well as the remaining storage on your computer.

The feature is something that Google forum users have been asking for, and it is good to see that the company is listening to their demands.

Google Photos' capabilities of using machine learning could play nice with the large quantity of synced data. With a huge quantity of photos uploaded into Drive, the artificial intelligence software could easily identify landmarks and locations, as well as delete duplicates.

Google Photos is expected to gain more lift in the future, and we look forward to seeing if Drive has anything to do with it. Cloud computing is one of the expanding trends in the tech industry, so you may keep your fingers crossed for even more features integrating Google Drive and your personal archive.

Using the sync feature comes with a small caveat, though: users should trust the cloud infrastructure more than their own computers, both for stability and security.

Earlier this year, Google rolled out another update to the Drive bringing improved search features, a refined preview function and a "Move and Add to Drive" button.

Are you using Google Drive? Tell us about your experience in the comments section below.