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Forum Discussion

stevenriz's avatar
stevenriz
Helpful | Level 5
7 years ago

Is there an option to use Dropbox as a mounted cloud drive?

Hih looking to see if Dropbox has a "drive" option where if you are connected to the internet, you can see your data through a folder on your file manager. When you disconnect, it goes away. Much lik...
Desktop
Sync
  • Rich's avatar
    Rich
    7 years ago
    stevenriz wrote:

    I do not want to sync anything, yet I do not want to use GUI to access my data. I'd like a mapped folder or drive to my data however. This will help keep our data organized.

    Dropbox does not have the functionality you want. Its intended purpose is not cloud storage in the sense that you have a mapped folder or drive. It's a synchronization tool first and foremost.

     

    That being said, Dropbox Professional and Business both have the Smart Sync feature which allows you to set the Dropbox folder and it's content to be Online-only but still appear on your local drive. Any file you open is downloaded and set Local and then opened like any other file. This still requires that you have the Dropbox client installed on your computer, and will still sync files that are set to Local.

Lusil's avatar
Lusil
Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
Hey there stevenriz, thanks for posting your question on the Forum, welcome aboard!
 
The Dropbox software is designed to watch your Dropbox folder and sync any files placed in the folder. Your Dropbox folder is just like any other folder on your hard drive, but with syncing features.
 
To take advantage of Dropbox, move or copy files into the Dropbox folder. Once Dropbox sees changes in the Dropbox folder, it automatically syncs the new changes to Dropbox servers and to any other device linked to your account. 
 
In the case where you don’t have internet available, the Dropbox folder will just be unable to sync changes that occur to the files in your Dropbox folder. Once you have internet again on your device, the changes will sync. If you’d like to have specific files available in your Dropbox folder, I’d recommend checking out selective sync. 
 
I hope this helps. Let me know here if you have any other questions and I’ll make sure to get back to you as soon as possible. Have a nice day!
stevenriz's avatar
stevenriz
Helpful | Level 5
7 years ago

Hi Lucil. Thank you for the reply. My main issue is we will have more data on Dropbox than our hard drives will hold. Hence we want to take full advantage of the Dropbox cloud. I do not want to sync anything, yet I do not want to use GUI to access my data. I'd like a mapped folder or drive to my data however. This will help keep our data organized. Does that make sense? I am not sure Dropbox has that functionality, does it?

  • Rich's avatar
    Rich
    Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II
    7 years ago
    stevenriz wrote:

    I do not want to sync anything, yet I do not want to use GUI to access my data. I'd like a mapped folder or drive to my data however. This will help keep our data organized.

    Dropbox does not have the functionality you want. Its intended purpose is not cloud storage in the sense that you have a mapped folder or drive. It's a synchronization tool first and foremost.

     

    That being said, Dropbox Professional and Business both have the Smart Sync feature which allows you to set the Dropbox folder and it's content to be Online-only but still appear on your local drive. Any file you open is downloaded and set Local and then opened like any other file. This still requires that you have the Dropbox client installed on your computer, and will still sync files that are set to Local.

    • stevenriz's avatar
      stevenriz
      Helpful | Level 5
      7 years ago

      That explains everything Thank you for the help Rich and all!

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