What's the status of virtual drive in desktop client?

📱 Desktop & mobile clients 💻 Desktop
1

I saw the post announcement about the virtual drive in 2019. I searched on the forum, but nothing is recent or relevant. I can’t find any information if it’s working, beta still, etc.

So, what’s the status of the virtual drive?

I got beta enabled, version 3.9.82 (Windows) with virtual files plugin: wincfapi on Windows 11.

Thanks.

2

It is working since ages!

You just have to activate it in your client, in settings window, behind the three dots at the right side:

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I hope this helps,

much luck!

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3

@ernolf thanks for replying. I just installed the desktop client. It gives me an option to add a folder to sync, but I don’t see any options to add a virtual drive.

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During installation, it didn’t ask to install Dokan drive, which based on this post, is required. I checked, my PC doesn’t have it.

Thanks for the help.

4

No. That is not how it works.

You should:

  1. hit the button “Add Folder Sync Connection”
  2. choose a local (physical) folder
  3. choose folders to sync (you can choose the complete cloud file-structure if you want)
  4. check “Use virtual files instead of downloading content immediately” if not already checked
  5. hit “Add Sync Connection”

That should do it.

much luck!

1 Like
5

I see. So, how did they create X: drive in the screenshot of that announcement post? Is that just a folder?

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I’m migrating from Google Drive, and I’m used to seeing G: drive. I thought X: drive was similar.

I want to make sure I set it up correctly from the start to avoid issues.

Thank you.

6

That was the development status as of January 2019. Meanwhile it made significant progress. An entire drive no longer needs to be virtualized. The goal of having all files visible without the need of physically downloading them is the same. Just more optimized.

If you want to have your cloud mounted as a drive, you can mount it as WEBdav.

Much luck!

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7

Thanks. I wish the blog post was updated to point to the correct information.

Linking root folder of Nextcloud basically works as if it’s a drive. Seems to work without issues.

8

“Use virtual files instead of downloading content immediately”
That option does not exist for me. Using Nextcloud version 3.4.2-1ubuntu1

I’ve been trying to use dav instead but it is nearly unusable for large data uploads. I have suffered several complete system crashes after moving large files into the mounted webdav folder… and of course the folder with the large uploads in them are precisely the ones we don’t want to sync to all local desktop clients.

The android client meanwhile does a lot of what we want - it can upload all new files (photos) but do not delete them when deleted on the phone. It is proving extremely cumbersome to recreate this on the desktop.

I am now mounting the data directories locally via sshfs (when travelling) or NFS (when in the same LAN as the server). This works okay-ish but I still need to manually trigger the occ files:scan --all command when I’m done.

9

That is right. It is a Windows feature.

1 Like