Nextcloud introduces Virtual Drive in Desktop Client to simplify desktop integration

as i stated before.

Netdrive is a small piece of software (till 1.3.4 Freeware). I call the network drive a network drive.

Netdrive donā€™t do local syncing. When you lost internet connection you can access files

Dokan doesnā€™t either. So whereā€™s the point?

With this logic in mind: i could also just mount the folder with "subst %DRIVELETTER% %PATHTOFOLDER% ". And now i have a Drive with synced files. That cannot be the point. This has nothing to do with the mapping of a network drive.

And i said before, i donā€™t want to make the solution bad (nice and easy needs to be) , i ask for the announced advantages over the existing ones with the new solution.

I tested it and yes it does

whatā€™s the current state of this very interesting project, esp. on Mac and Linux?
Didnā€™t find any news after the first announcement and only see discussion here until April.
Would be sad to see this project being abandoned, was there any decision on its future?

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I saw someone commenting that :
They finally Ā« stole Ā» the Owncloud implementation of the Virtual Drive. A fork has been made.

Helas i canā€™t confirm that.
You should go into the github of the nexcloud/desktop repository and look into the virtual drive branch.

Does anyone knows anything on this project?
I desperately tried to follow every thread here and on github, but no real official statement on that in 2 years (!).
It has been commented to death on the nextcloud forums and addressed multiple time on github with users proposing to pay for that development.
But except of tons of recommandations and suppositions by various users, no real ETA or official statement has been made since that ominous annoucement.
Fact is that after two years since the initial announcement all of the other big and not so big cloud provider offer this kind of solution except NC.
Iā€™m sorry but this is frustating as a user and Iā€™m wondering how nextcloud can claim to be the most popular cloud file synching solution provider.
I guess that with the pivot to transform nextcloud into a hub where the users are supposed to work more using your webbrowser than their file browser the attention to add such essentials improvement to the desktop-client is lowered.
This development on that essential functionality is very saddening.
Iā€™m moving back to owncloud.

from er-vin:

This is still under work. Unlikely to be tagged stable this year, aiming at Q1 or Q2 next year.

Thanks, i also saw that phrase in one of numerous github issues.
And thatā€™s what I mean that the com is saddening about this dev.
No real statement for a year.
I mean, alone in this forum post where it has been officially announced, there are up to today 238 answers nearly 30k views and not one official reply or post since september last year.

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I would also like to see some news about this topic.

Currently testing nextcloud, I m struggling with this client sync on my mac. Itā€™s eating my local disc space when I would like to only select what I want to be downloaded and work on it and resync while still having the possibility to see all folders and files.

Isnā€™t it better to have it loaded as an external/server drive rather than a local drive?

Maybe I m losing the point or somehting.
But for me having a cloud that is eating space on all my workstation isnā€™t a cloudā€¦

I would also like to see some news about this topic.

they working on it you see it also in this branch (6 days ago last activity):

But for me having a cloud that is eating space on all my workstation isnā€™t a cloud

this is a weird definition of cloud. but anyways until the feature is there just restructure the data and then donĀ“t sync all of your folders. if this is not possible add it via webdav ā€¦

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What you are talking about is already possible. You can mount your Nextcloud via WebDAV which will add your Nextcloud as a remote drive, so you can see and edit all files.

The difference from the discussed ā€œVirtual Driveā€ is, that you will have to be online, because WebDAV is like a network file system which doesnā€™t cache anything. Virtual Drive should close this gap in the future, as it will list everything but keep files offline available if you edit them automatically.

So for your usecase i advise to mark often used files and folders to synchronize with the desktop client and parallel mount your Nextcloud via WebDAV, so you have the best of two worlds until the discussed feature will be ready (and it wonā€™t get ready earlier if people have to spend time to answer the same question the 50th time :wink:)

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would like to have it working this is the only reason that keep me still on owncloud

If your cloud is bigger than your local drive and you try to sync your cloud what will happen?

You are not forced to sync your whole cloud, but this you know.

You complaints will not be solved using the sync client in its current version.

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Hello Stefan,

Thank you for replying and explaining that to me. I m pretty new on nextcloud and I have been reading out the last 2 weeks a lot of articles, forum, helps, etc. on many different topics and I found the WebDAV but from what I understood it was an old method not recommanded or used.
Since I m new, I also thought that the desktop client would work the same as other cloud/server or the mobile app. I understand it tooks time and this is open source and free so I m not against that at all =)
I ll try to learn more and implement the WebDAV to give it a try.

Thank for taking the time replying and guiding me. I m learning a lot.
@kinimodmeyer thank you as well for your answer and the links, it helps a lot.

For me a cloud should not use anyspace on your workstation unless you download the file on your system to work on it. But you should be able to see the indexation of all your files and basics informations, this should work like a NAS. (It was the case for the solution I used a few year ago MeetLima (that went out of business). Thatā€™s what I was trying to say about the cloud eating my HDD :wink:

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I understood that today thanks to this community.

I ll give WebDAV a try this week. :slightly_smiling_face:

I know that I m not forces to sync my whole cloud but I just thought I would have at least all the folders empty or the name of files without them being reachable. I was used to this so I was a bit lost when I discovered that it was actually downloading all my cloud on my local disk.

So for sure this ll be an improvement and a great feature.
I m not able to code or do 1% of what you guys are doing, I m learning NC and definitly want to know more about it in order to better understand the working behind etc.

I m not a native english speaker so I might have sound a bit too complaining.

Thank you

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Anyway webdav is not the same to have virtualdrive since with VirtualDrive i can have locally what i mostly use and other stuff only on nas, when i access most used files i got ssd speed since are in local with webdav are always remotely and that does not work.

Please read the thread before posting the same stuff over and over again:exclamation:

@spupuz i have explained the difference literally two posts above and @SwissM replyed that he will test it.

Really everything that is related to this topic has been discussed soooo often in this thread. It is really annoying to spin the circle again and again and again.

  • What is Virtual Drive
  • When does it arrive
  • Why does it not work yet
  • What is good / bad about the external communication from Nextcloud GmbH
  • How can I support and help pushing this feature forward
  • Which alternatives do I have now until this feature has been published
  • What are the pros / cons / differences between the current alternatives and the Virtual Drive
  • ā€¦

Everything is here. Right in this thread.

</rant>

I fully agree to the summary of @stefan-niedermann and will close the topic.
As soon as there are any news on this you will see a new topic in the forums.

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