OneDrive/SharePoint drive mapper - which one?

[kennysarmy]

Yes that's just the local drive capacity it shows. Ignore it.

 

Are you running the latest V3 application?

 

Currently trialling it yes.

 

Looks like it might solve some problems for us.

[cheekycharly]

I would just show the teaching staff to use CDM drives rather than OneDrive.

 

I have it so pupils login and get their OneDrive folders and another for the general pupils shared data.

 

Staff get their own OneDrive location and a staff drive plus the pupils drive.

 

You can keep OneDrive on the machines just steer them into saving to the mapped drive instead of the local My Documents folder etc.

[DavR]

I would just show the teaching staff to use CDM drives rather than OneDrive.

 

I have it so pupils login and get their OneDrive folders and another for the general pupils shared data.

 

Staff get their own OneDrive location and a staff drive plus the pupils drive.

 

You can keep OneDrive on the machines just steer them into saving to the mapped drive instead of the local My Documents folder etc.

 

 

We have kept OneDrive drive sync, set up automatically, AND we have CDM deliver a mapped Home drive (H:\), plus the traditional mapped drives.

 

OneDrive sync performs OK for home folders, and, we point our folder redirection there. There are also a very few cases where things won't work via a CDM mapped drive (mail merge for instance) so it's good to have the option of locally sync'd files to work from.

 

That said, if I were starting fresh I might try and go pure CDM. I've had an invite to start using v3 but haven't had the time yet to trial it, or work out what the upgrade path is.

[thimon]

We’ve moved to v3 and it’s great, maps a lot quicker from experience. File transfer speeds are also so much faster! You’ll need to uninstall v2 and it’s not an upgrade of the existing software, it’s completely different.

[cheekycharly]

You will also need .NET Desktop Runtime 8.0.14 as that is a new prerequisite with the latest version. 

[thimon]

3 hours ago, cheekycharly said:

You will also need .NET Desktop Runtime 8.0.14 as that is a new prerequisite with the latest version. 

Yup. We install that as part of a pre install step. 

[DavR]

Yup, same here. 

 

Mildly annoying deploying via group policy, as the main installer was an MSI, but the Desktop Runtime is a one line command.

 

As a result I ended up doing CDM v3 and Desktop Runtime both as startup scripts, instead of using the MSI deployment, so I could be sure I was managing the order of the installers correctly.

[DrCheese]

Yes have moved ours to V3 after were throttled by Microsoft - V2 has no throttling logic so it would freeze up & basically keep trying to hammer MS which made the problem worse.

 

All went away with V3, which is throttling aware & acts accordingly.

 

[thimon]

2 hours ago, DavR said:

Yup, same here. 

 

Mildly annoying deploying via group policy, as the main installer was an MSI, but the Desktop Runtime is a one line command.

 

As a result I ended up doing CDM v3 and Desktop Runtime both as startup scripts, instead of using the MSI deployment, so I could be sure I was managing the order of the installers correctly.

They have an upgrade tool which works great, automatically installs any prerequisites. Haven’t been able to get it working silently yet. I might reach out to their support. 

[TheRobins]

+1 for CDM, Currently testing V3 and also moving main file shares into Sharepoint. Did have a few issues a couple of years ago with V2, Microsoft kept bringing out changes to the API and not letting them know, first they knew about it was when the phone wouldnt stop ringing. 

 

V3 has been very stable for the 2 months I have been running it, the logging is good as well if there are any issues. 

[cheekycharly]

Just had our renewal come through and the price has increased by 25% 🫣

[TheRobins]

Same as everything else sadly

[DavR]

Oh fun, that'll be something to look forward to. 

[Jawloms]

We have a 1GB network and everyone stores their files on a server. We're going to be moving to a 1GB Internet, which is the same as the LAN speed, so does it need to sync? Can't it just open files on request as currently happens over the LAN? - This is the native OneDrive/MS stuff I'm asking about.....

[DavR]

As far as I know, the native OneDrive client relies on sync technology, regardless of your line speed. Depending on your settings, it can sync just placeholders, so the files only sync fully when you open them, but it's a sync technology all the same

 

If you don't want to do that, don't use the OneDrive client, use the OneDrive web front end. Or, just open your files direct from OneDrive using the Microsoft O365 client programs.

[thimon]

3 hours ago, cheekycharly said:

Just had our renewal come through and the price has increased by 25% 🫣

Phew! Ours renews in Sept, however I was able to pay for the renewal a few months ago, keeping our current price. 

[cheekycharly]

19 hours ago, thimon said:

Phew! Ours renews in Sept, however I was able to pay for the renewal a few months ago, keeping our current price. 

Jammy git!

[Edu-IT]

How different is it to the pricing here?

 

https://www.iamcloud.com/pricing/cloud-drive-mapper/

[thimon]

Just used that link, and if that’s the new pricing, then yes it’s gone up 25%

[kennysarmy]

On 03/04/2025 at 08:10, TheRobins said:

+1 for CDM, Currently testing V3 and also moving main file shares into Sharepoint. Did have a few issues a couple of years ago with V2, Microsoft kept bringing out changes to the API and not letting them know, first they knew about it was when the phone wouldnt stop ringing. 

 

V3 has been very stable for the 2 months I have been running it, the logging is good as well if there are any issues. 

 

Do you use the Folder Redirection element of CDM?

 

I can get Videos, Pictures etc to redirect but not currently Documents

 

 

[thimon]

59 minutes ago, kennysarmy said:

 

Do you use the Folder Redirection element of CDM?

 

I can get Videos, Pictures etc to redirect but not currently Documents

 

 

We use folder redirection but using the official OneDrive app. We only use CDM to map SharePoint libraries and Teams. 

Edited June 4, 2025 by thimon

[Edu-IT]

If you don't use a product like CDM, is there an alternative way to map drives, without having to download / sync every file, or is it clunky?

[Smokebomb]

There are open source scripts out there. Bear in mind that these all use the webDAV protocol for the file transfers which is what Cloud Drive Mapper has just moved away from due to its limitations around speed, integration with File Explorer progress bars, file size limits, and inability to get around throttling that Microsoft may apply to your org: OneDriveMapper | Liebensraum.

 

Here's some really useful techie info on the underlying tech that Cloud Drive Mapper is using in their product these days (as you can tell, I'm a fan!) Cloud Drive Mapper (CDM) overview

[itskdog]

I'm trialling the CDM v3 beta on my own machine, but still using v2 until we do our migration to Intune in the summer.

 

The only thing to be aware of compared to v2 is that file/folder listings update every 5 minutes by default (configurable down to 2 mins), so if one person saves something, it usually won't be visible immediately, when the WebDAV used in v2 was live with the changes on SharePoint/OneDrive.

 

The pros definitely outweigh the cons though, can upload files >4GB (Windows treats all WebDAV servers as FAT) and applications don't go "Not Responding" while the file is uploading. You can turn on a popup to let users know the upload progress so they are less likely to save a file then immediately log off, preventing the upload from completing.

 

The version history issue with ActivInspire (where saving writes a temp file, deletes the existing file, then renames the new version) is still there though (so you'll still be restoring older versions of flipcharts from the recycle bin when they get corrupted), but I do have a feature request open to try and get that resolved.

[TheRobins]

Thats interesting, I am using V3 and just tested its around 15 - 30 seconds on average to update. I noticed that Onedrive Online to CDM is quicker than the other way around. I seem to remember some of their users having their one drive traffic rate limited due to CDM V2 sending large waves of traffic via WebDav to the O365 servers, maybe this feature is to stop that from happening?