OneDrive - Native Client or Drive Mapper?

[mrbios]

Wondering how many of you have purchased something like IAMCloud or Burconix Cloud Mapper vs using the Native OneDrive client for syncing?

 

What are the current pros and cons of each you know of?

 

We're heavily desktops with zero 1:1, so students move about a lot. Biggest negative i know of in that situation is a student signing out before the sync client has finished syncing their work. Those of you using the native client, how do you work around this issue, if at all?

 

What are the negative aspects of a drive mapper app utilising webdav?

 

As you can guess from the above questions, I'm still entirely onprem. Looked at moving, or at least starting to, for 3 years running now. Each year something or someone holds me back, but im determined this year...just need to pick the path of least resistance.

[TechMonkey]

Used IAMCloud in a previous life. Although at the time it seemed to solve a problem, it did prevent people changing their mindset and locked them into the old one. It also had a lot of issues using WebDAV, such as being hit with throttling with no warning or resolution. This could cut the school off from using drives completely. The new version was always on the way, which would solve all the issues, but that has been for the past 5+ years. No idea if that ever got delivered.

 

I'm almost certain the logout sync issue is now solved as that was one reason we moved away from native client originally. Not had any issues with that now. Also, with the native client you get shortcuts, which are game changing, though I wish you could have more than one per location. Shortcuts will follow users on any device as they are created in your OneDrive, so another benefit.

 

I've not looked at DriveMapper in the past 2 years, so no idea what else it adds, beyond convenience. The downside of the native client is that you need to teach your users how to click the shortcut button, but it does mean they get to choose what they have quick access to, and Teams is a good front end to access most things anyway.

[mrbios]

Used IAMCloud in a previous life. Although at the time it seemed to solve a problem, it did prevent people changing their mindset and locked them into the old one. It also had a lot of issues using WebDAV, such as being hit with throttling with no warning or resolution. This could cut the school off from using drives completely. The new version was always on the way, which would solve all the issues, but that has been for the past 5+ years. No idea if that ever got delivered.

 

Yea i asked them last year about the new client, they said august/september. Nothing appeared. I asked them again in November, they said announcement in Jan and release in Feb. I emailed them last week on Monday, no response........ I'm assuming that doesn't exist/never coming and just going to base my decision off the current clients now instead. Eager to move or at the very least start Y7s this September on OneDrive.

[TechMonkey]

Yea i asked them last year about the new client, they said august/september. Nothing appeared. I asked them again in November, they said announcement in Jan and release in Feb. I emailed them last week on Monday, no response........ I'm assuming that doesn't exist/never coming and just going to base my decision off the current clients now instead. Eager to move or at the very least start Y7s this September on OneDrive.

 

Just had a look. Last blog post was in July saying late '23/early '24. You experience has been the same as mine for the 5 years, always just coming. Can't tell if it is vapourware, project issues or just feature creep/dealing with MS moving targets.

[DrCheese]

Just had a look. Last blog post was in July saying late '23/early '24. You experience has been the same as mine for the 5 years, always just coming. Can't tell if it is vapourware, project issues or just feature creep/dealing with MS moving targets.

 

We are Cloud Drive Mapper users - It's a good product but someone pointed out the other day that the company has stopped accepting orders for all other services since July & focusing on just the next gen sync agent - Which shows you how small they are....

 

I do think they need to update customers at this point

[thimon]

We use both. OneDrive client for user documents, CloudDriveMapper for mapping Sharepoint libraries to File Explorer. Using this combination helped us ditch our file server. Edited January 29, 2024 by thimon