Google Drive mounted on login

[jawebber]

Hi all,

 

Looking for a bit of advice on Google Drive mounting as a drive in My Computer. I use Cyberduck at home to create a share of my Google drive and wondered if a similar product exists for schools. I want it to mint on login but NOT download the whole of the Google drive onto the local computer as the normal sync app does - but instead provide an interface or virtual drive for accessing Drive files.

 

Has anyone used anything similar at their school?

 

Thanks on any info!

 

James

[jmak]

Filestream is the product you need. You'll need G Suite for education to obtain and use it.

[jawebber]

Thank you! Does it integrate fine with AD for students, so whoever it's logged on sees their Drive mounted in explorer? This sounds much easier than Cyberduck if so!

[jmak]

Mostly [emoji16] , although I did notice this today: https://www.edugeek.net/showthread.php?t=198084

 

Although it describes an issue, it also gives a solution.

 

Loads of threads on here about File Stream - I haven't deployed it, but I have been using it since it came out and it's worked really well for me as a "user".

[jawebber]

Thank you!

[FN-GM]

Is there a way to silently configure File Stream so there is no user input required?

[jawebber]

Ah, yes - the system I need must mount / link to the virtual drive automatically. Does this exist?

[FN-GM]

Does this exist?

 

Good question!

 

@Arthur might know

[dhicks]

Ah, yes - the system I need must mount / link to the virtual drive automatically. Does this exist?

 

We're using Insync to mount our "Media" drive, with around 3.5TB of images and video:

 

https://www.insynchq.com/

 

We run Insync on a Windows file server - the client machines mount the Windows file share as normal, and get I/O speeds as fast as our file server can manage, Insync takes care of syncing the fils to/from Google Drive. It cuts down on the bandwidth used for a shared drive (you just have one client accessing Google Drive), and you keep local network access to your files. This seems to be working well for our Media drive, I plan to move more shared drives and individual Documents / Desktop folders over the summer.

[Arthur]

Foldr or ExpanDrive (the customized version) perhaps?

 

It's been a while since I have used either, but I think they can do what @jawebber wants.

[Michael]

Is there a way to silently configure File Stream so there is no user input required?

 

Not quite, but implementing the ForceBrowserAuth* registry mod here will automatically launch a Google sign in page, which then on subsequent logons works automatically.

 

If said user logs out of Google FS, then the Google sign in page reappears, but staying logged in it will map automatically.

[FN-GM]

Not quite, but implementing the ForceBrowserAuth* registry mod here will automatically launch a Google sign in page, which then on subsequent logons works automatically.

 

If said user logs out of Google FS, then the Google sign in page reappears, but staying logged in it will map automatically.

 

Thanks. Will that allow you to automatically populate the username? We use SAML so it might make it automated?

[Michael]

This is how I have it configured, which works perfectly -

 

Users sign into O365

 

Navigate to the Menu bar (top left) > All apps

 

I've created an Custom Tile in O365, which points to:

 

https://drive.google.com/a/

 

This then auto signs users into Google Drive as a separate tab.

 

Users can manually Pin the app to launcher, (to make it quicker/easier), as currently O365 Admins cannot do this.

[Michael]

Thanks. Will that allow you to automatically populate the username? We use SAML so it might make it automated?

 

No it doesn't populate the username, you still have to enter it manually as you would O365.