How to map OneDrive as a network drive

Hi Laflèche,

Glad to provide my suggestion for you.  

I did search a lot about how to map OneDrive for Business as a network drive. However, we are sorry to convey that we can only use out-of-box way to map Personal OneDrive as a network drive.

We do understand that this feature will be convenient for your work, to better help us improve products, you can kindly vote this idea in OneDrive UserVoice,  the related team will adapt the idea of the high vote and bring them into reality. Your vote may turn this feature into reality and benefit more users.

However, we found a similar thread that customer use PowerShell command achieved this.  You can post in TechNet Forum if you encounter any error while running this script. Appreciate for your understanding.

Best Regards,

Ivy

If this is not possible, i'll change my question. All users in my establishment have access to office 365 and 1TB on OneDrive. Currently, our users store their data in a network drive connected to a shared folder on a NAS. I would like to change this network drive with OneDrive. Instead, is it possible to connect OneDrive as a shared folder without increasing my local storage? My users should not enter any credential, so i have to script the processus (I have a way to get the current user password). Can OneDrive work as my actual network drive? Or is it impossible for OneDrive?

If everything i wrote earlier is impossible, is there a way to store only on cloud with the default OneDrive application in Windows 10 (It as to be done automatically)?

Thank

Laflèche Chevrette

If this is not possible, i'll change my question. All users in my establishment have access to office 365 and 1TB on OneDrive. Currently, our users store their data in a network drive connected to a shared folder on a NAS. I would like to change this network drive with OneDrive. Instead, is it possible to connect OneDrive as a shared folder without increasing my local storage? My users should not enter any credential, so i have to script the processus (I have a way to get the current user password). Can OneDrive work as my actual network drive? Or is it impossible for OneDrive?

If everything i wrote earlier is impossible, is there a way to store only on cloud with the default OneDrive application in Windows 10 (It as to be done automatically)?

Thank

Laflèche Chevrette

I think perhaps you're coming at this from the wrong direction - ie: trying to use a modern platform in the way you have used for many years, bit of a square peg in a round hole situation.

I would recommend OneDrive for the user's personal work files, that they may share with colleagues on a one to one or one to a few basis, to collaborate.

For files that are shared across the whole organisation (formerly on a shared network drive) I would look at SharePoint as the shared file platform.  Or, if the fit is right, Teams!

Office 365 is a modern collaborative platform and sometimes some change to be able to get the full benefit isn't a bad thing!

Hi Laflèche,

Thanks for MarkInKent’s sharing.

Description provided by MarkInKent is correct. Personal OneDrive is used for storing users’ own files and contents. Microsoft is having the SharePoint Online product as a sharing platform which can make users collaborate with others in the organization effectively.

Same as OneDrive, we can sync the SharePoint Online Document libraries to their PC and work from their device. You can also map SharePoint Online site as a shared drive.

You can refer to this article:

Introduction to SharePoint Online.

Sync SharePoint files with the OneDrive sync app.

In addition, we would like to know the detail name of Office subscription you’re using at your end. (SharePoint Online service is only available for Office 365 Business/ Enterprise subscriptions.)

Best Regards,

Ivy

I think i mispoke. The network drives are connected to folders on my NAS. There are one folder by user. They use this space to store their personal datas. None one but teh owner of the folder can access it. I don't think SharePoint or Teams, or maybe even OneDrive are useful to me. I would like to know if it's possible to use OneDrive as a personnal cloud storage for my users. It is important that the solution does not increase my local storage like OneDrive currently does with the default application. 

Ahh ok, so that does sounds like a OneDrive use case.  The key to local storage usage is what are you syncing?  If you sync your OneDrive files then you will use local storage.  If your users access their files via the OneDrive web portal then you are accessing directly to the cloud which will minimise the local storage.

Ok, now we move on. I understand the way of working of OneDrive. But if i connect OneDrive as a network drive, it took my local storage. If you look at the pictures, my network drive named OneDrive (z:) and my local disk windows (c:) have the same amount of space. If you look at my other network drive Groupes (N:), it doesn't use my local storage, but my filesystem storage.  Is it possible to do the same thing with OneDrive or not? Is it possible do disable auto sync on OneDrive to upload my file only on the cloud?

P.S : I have access to 1Tb of space on my OneDrive.

thank

Hi Laflèche,

Thanks for your efforts on this case.

I tested again to map a personal OneDrive on my PC, and I drag some large files into it. After compare the before storage of C: drive, the storage of C: drive did increase after this action even thought the speed shows like I upload a file to network drive. So we are sorry for that the mapped OneDrive also will take the storage of PC.

However, in the official article, the map drive is not recommended for users. Because the co-authoring of files in there won’t work. It’s hard for multiple users work together as it will treat actions are modified by the same user.

We would like to suggest you use SharePoint site as a shared platform, and you can use OneDrive to sync libraries for accessing files easily. We are sorry for the long process of handling this case, appreciate your understanding.

You can feel free to contact us if you encounter any issue when using SharePoint or other Office 365 products, we will try our best to assist.

Best Regards,

Ivy