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

[stevenriz]

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 like Box and Egnyte have. I "assumed" Dropbox has this functionality but do not see it anywhere I look on the app. Any help? Thanks!!

[Lusil]

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]

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 · Accepted solution]

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@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.

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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]

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

[Jason R. C.]

Expandrive offers the feature you seek. Give it a try for free. I use it and recommend it.

[AlexSlaets]

You do need to appreciate that using cloud storage (of any type) as a mounted  drive is unreliable if there is no caching used. 

On the windows and mac platforms smart sync automatic smart sync will essentially do what you need,  but some disk space will be used for local copies of files you are actually opening on the client. 

If you are tech-savvy I advise you to have a look at rclone , which supports many cloud services and allows exactly what you are looking for: mounting dropbox in the file system. Automatic caching is used - I repeat : without caching it cannot work reliably.