Virtual drive will work for you too,
By left clicking a folder you can sync it on your hard drive.
No internet, no problem the file is here and will get syncd back when internet comes back.
But you need to have the nextcloud deamon/client opened.
1 Like
Thank you, Nemskiller.
In the application in question the user is not involved with the local directory tree at this time. That is, the user will not touch the files or directories. The client daemon is guaranteed to be running in this case. All options and actions must be invoked by the app.
This requirement is met with the current client. Is the virtual drive client daemon as capable?
The problem is that the Virtual Drive Client isnât in a testable state. It is very buggy and really badly working.
You must wait until minimum Septembre to get a better test version for the Virtual Drive.
My two cents worth on this subject. Right, a smart Virtual Drive makes files always visible, independently of whether they are physically available locally or not - nevertheless, personally Iâm not convinced at all that this approach is really far more seamless and fundamentally superior as the current/traditional way: Firstly, the Virtual Drive makes sure files are available when needed, but ONLY IF THE USER (if he is allowed to do so from an organisational or a security point of view) DELIBERATELY DECIDES AND PREVIOUSLY CHOOSES the respective files accordingly. I would expect that on selecting the root directory, we would get a result like the currently implemented solution - but with one big drawback: the chosen files will be kept available for a set time in a local cache, WITHOUT ANY CONSIDERATION OF POTENTIALLY EXISTENT TECHNICAL AND/OR STRUCTURAL CONSTRAINTS ON THE USER SIDE.
As I can judge so far, the two approaches -synchronized directories and Virtual Drive- are IMHO fully legitimate to COEXIST, BASICALLY BECAUSE THEY SERVE, NOT COMPLETELY, BUT SUBSTANTIALLY, DIFFERENT USE CASES:
-
The current Data Replication implementation is a solution that allows maintaining in sync public and/or private data all across multiple devices and/or multiple drives and/or several paths. Data Replication is a stable, reliable and highly predictable âsetup once and forgetâ service, being disk space on local system the critical factor.
-
Virtual Drive provides full access to the personal cloud data and permits the user to select precisely which data will be physically replicated into a local cache repository. Itâs a mostly resource-saving focused approach, but in some aspects and depending on the usage, also quite hieratical: eventually existing presets and/or restrictions regarding data location on the local machine cannot be handled straightforward.
After thinking about several times and based on the right on top of this thread described operating mode of the Virtual Drive, I can hardly perceive any really convincing and satisfactory way to merge both approaches into an all-in-one solution, neither from a technical perspective, nor from a usability point of view. The new Virtual Drive is very nice and without any doubts a more than worthwhile approach, and maybe there is also the need to apply some sort of comprehensive optimisation or streamlining the client operational process, but not on coevally narrowing down the current functionality, a nowadays still valid and very appreciated solution, as argued in most of the here published comments. In this spirit: Please, deliver what your customers do asking for, as manifested by your CEO, Frank Karlitschek.
By the way, thanks for your openness, allowing and encouraging your community to provide input.
4 Likes
Iâve been testing Mountain duck lately. Itâs similar to Nextcloud Virtual drive, plus it has Cryptomator integrated (and supports many other services). Sure, itâs not free, but it is also not so expensive in my opinion. The point is - we already have working solution, though itâs not âMade by Nextcloudâ, if that is important to someone 
1 Like
Strangly i got some really bad performance with the virtual drive of Mountain duck.
Even in local network.
So either it was the first release of Mountain duck so it needed more work on it, or my nextcloud wasnât optimised for that
If itâs really available for multi-account, ten would be nice have as separate disk mounted.
whats the updates on it , any new releases coming soon ?>
No still in delayed mode.
No news for the moment.
So, is there a test version for Mac as of now, or Windows only?
Is the Virtual Drive implemented as an App, as an update to the Desktop Client, or as a full install of a new version of Nextcloud?
Just a windows client software for the moment.
You need to install the test version and uninstall the stable one.
But donât go inside, itâs not in active development for the moment.
Since I was searching for an alternative to this (since virtual drive seems to be stuck a little bit here on nextcloud side) I found a good working alternative for me I wanted to share: https://www.airlivedrive.com/en/
The free version is limited to 1 drive per cloud and 3 clouds in total, but for personal use I find this is good enough. And it works, already seen files are cached (you can define the max cache size). But seems to be windows only.
Iâm a bit worried. Been relying on the desktop client for my small business for 5 years now.
I use the files on the cloud on my home pc and my business laptop. I hardly use the web interface for the files part as I use MS Office for all the documents.
Besides the syncing feature, I rely on the fact that if my cloud messed up, I have copies on the pc AND the laptop so business wouldnt be affected whilst the server is down.
I think the virtual drive is good idea but it must be ADDED to the current features, not replacing the syncing thing. Unless we got the option to have the full account as available offline but isnât that just then complicating the current way.
If you go to the virtual drive option as a replacement, it would be nice to keep the last stable desktop version going to work with all nextcloud versions so we have the option which client to use.
Just my view.
3 Likes
It seems there is still so much confusion about the virtual drive.
You totally have the choice there.
The only difference the new client (=the new virtual drive) makes: you see the complete folder structure on your devices and not only a few selected folder/ files.
So (I believe) the only downside with that virtual drive is, that you canât have a âtidyâ NC folder on your client with only the few important files/ folders that matter to you on the client device; you just see all files.
Now regarding your requirement to have a few files offline available on all your devices: you can still have that. Iâll try to illustrate that, so imagine you have your virtual drive and see three folders there:
V:
|-- unimportant_stuff
|
|-- unimportant_stuff2
|
|-- very_important_folder
By default you will see these folders (just like the files in there) as only online available, meaning the files will be downloaded from the server and cached on your client device only for the time you are viewing/ editing the files. When you close the files, the cached files on your device will be removed (maybe not immediately but with next restart probably; donât know).
That way you save a lot of disk space and you donât need to open the browser to access your files. Just navigate through the (hard disk) drives on your system with the file explorer like you would with locally stored files.
Now for your specific use case with important folders, which you want to store on all your devices as well:
You right-click all these important folders (and files) and select âavailable offlineâ. Within the next few seconds the new NC client will download all these folders and files and actually really store them on your hard disk (the folder/ files on your virtual disk are then some kind of softlinks to the actual data on your hard disk).
V:
|-- unimportant_stuff
|
|-- unimportant_stuff2
|
|-- very_important_folder 
The folder is visually marked so that you can see, this folder actually exists on your device for offline availability. Doing the same on all your other devices (just like setting up the old client), will leave you with pretty much the same result as before.
If you lose the internet connection: no problem; offline available.
Server hard disk died: no problem; offline available (and you have a backup, right?! 
)
Summarizing: the new virtual drive is already only an addition to the already available sync feature. It is only a different approach to make files available and browseable for you; actually easier.
I hope this explains a bit.
1 Like
There is just a little thing that worried everyone is that @jospoortvliet talk about : removing the old sync methode to keep only the virtual drive one. That is a bad idea in the opinion of a lot of people who wrote on this topic.
For the moment the virtual drive isnât ready at all so the question is postponed. But i hope Nextcloud will listens their users.
5 Likes
I get it, that some users have their reasons to prefer the old client. It just seems that the majority of concerned users understands the new virtual drive as not capable of providing offline files as the old sync client did. And this fear is unfounded.
There are very good points/ ideas to take into considerations when developing the new client though. Like the folder/ disk where âoffline availableâ files are actually stored. This needs to be configurable.
Users who donât want to see all âonly online availableâ files, should have a button to hide them (and see offline available files only).
But I think if these valid suggestions for improvements are integrated into the client (and it is still in development), it is a complete replacement for the old client anyway and (I hope I didnât forget anything) is missing not a bit of the old clientâs features.
What we have to remind ourselves: resources are limited. Already for the current desktop client developers are missing. How can there be enough resources to develop and improve two clients?
Being open-source, I think everybody who really needs the old clientâs development to continue can start working on it With only one or two developers I can understand that NC devs need to make a decision.
I hope you understand what I mean. (english is not my mother tongue unfortunately.)
2 Likes
I hope they will make the development transparent and give out test versions early enough to be able to react to feedback from the community. For those who can and are interested, there is the Nextcloud conference next month in Berlin, itâs a good way to get in touch with the Nextcloud team and community, you see current status of NC and future plans.
3 Likes
Any update on when we get a Mac version?
I was recently sold on the idea of hosting my own cloud stuff at home - I already have a home server, just needed to add a VM and Cloudron to it. The promise was that Nextcloud had âfiles on demandâ parity with OneDrive, which is why I switched from Dropbox (which doesnât support files on demand) to OneDrive (which does). I have a few hundred thousand files, a bit over 500 GB, in OneDrive⌠lots of accumulated clutter and crap.
And absolutely NO intention of syncing it all to all my PCs all the time.
Nor would I want to lose access to it by deselecting whole folders for visibility/access in the client. (whatâs the point of even storing the files, then?)
This âvirtual driveâ feature is absolutely essential. I downloaded the preview build that has the feature, set it up, and it promptly just crashes - new install, blank server. I see the X: drive there, and my (default) files are in there, but if I open the âNextcloud.mp4â file, the Nextcloud app just blinks out of the taskbar, disappears, and leaves me with a âthe directory name is invalidâ error message.
Not off to a great start. If I could vote for a feature, Iâd put this at the very top of the list - to get it right (preferably using Windows and Macâs native âcloud fileâ infrastructure like OneDrive does, not add-on software like Dokan).
further crash details: I have â2.5.0techpreview (build 20190128)â, installed over (by uninstalling) the current release version. It would start up with a âpauseâ icon, no way to unpause it (???). I cleared the %appdata%\Nextcloud folder, and it asked me to sign-in again (so I did, yay). Now itâs just stuck at âwaiting to start syncingâ. Oof.
You canât for the moment install the virtual drive test for nextcloud. Read some answer more upper to see why.
You can download the OwnCloud client and use the virtual drive. Itâs beta but you can try it.