This document identifies some questions and answers that you may find helpful when using Box Drive.
How much hard drive space does Box Drive utilize?
Which files can I access when using Box Drive?
Can I access my files in Box Drive when I am not connected to a network?
Can I use Box Drive and Box Sync at the same time?
I am getting an error message when using Box Drive. What does it mean?
How can I clear my Box Drive data from my computer?
Is there a maximum amount of data that I can use mark for offline use?
Can I access Box Drive from different machines?
Does Box Drive work on mobile devices using iOS or Android?
Can I use Spotlight, Finder, Windows Explorer, or Cortana to search files in Box?
Does Box Drive support file names that contain special characters?
Can I use Box Drive as a bulk migration tool?
Will Box Drive ever support viewing more file metadata than just file size, date created, etc.?
What File Types are Supported for Box Drive Preview/Thumbnails?
How does Box Drive work?
Box Drive is an application that displays all file and folder meta data from your Box account to a desktop client. When you access a file from Box Drive, the application downloads the file in question and opens it locally on your computer. After you finish making edits and save, the changes are saved back up to the cloud and stored on your Box account.
How much hard drive space does Box Drive utilize?
Box Drive utilizes a minimum of 1GB of hard drive space, and not more than 25GBs for locally cached data. See Technical Information for Box Drive Administrators for more details.
Which files can I access when using Box Drive?
Box Drive allows you to view all files and folders your have access to in your Box account, just as if you were viewing your files via box.com on the web. The actions you can take with those files (download, view, edit) are the same in Box Drive as on the web.
Can I access my files in Box Drive when I am not connected to a network?
Yes. While you must have an active network connection in order to access your all of your Box content in Box Drive, you can mark specific files and folders to be available when offline. See Making Content Available Offline for more details.
Can I use Box Drive and Box Sync at the same time?
No. Using Box Drive and Box Sync on the same computer is not supported. When installing Box Drive, you will be prompted to uninstall Box Sync. Box Sync can be uninstalled manually using the instructions found in Uninstalling Box Sync.
I am getting an error message when using Box Drive. What does it mean?
Error messages may indicate a problem with a file or folder, a permissions issue, or other technical problem when using Box Drive. Review Miscellaneous Box Drive Error Notifications to see if the error message and suggested resolution are available.
How can I clear my Box Drive data from my computer?
Box Drive features a “clean logout” which clears all local data from your computer when you manually log out of the application. See Using Box Drive Basics for instructions to manually logout of Box Drive.
Is there a maximum amount of data that I can use mark for offline use?
Box Drive uses a cache to stream files from the cloud as opposed to downloading all the files to your machine. This cache is set to 25GB or 50% of your hard drive space if your machine has less than 50GB of free space. This cache size is not related to marking folders for offline. Marking folders for offline access downloads the folder and all sub-folders and files to your hard drive. You may mark as many folders for offline access as you choose up until your machine only has 2GB left of free space, at which point you will receive an error that there is not enough disk space.
Can I access Box Drive from different machines?
You can make content available offline on a per machine basis. For example, if you're using Box Drive on your work computer as well as your home computer, you can have different content made available offline on each computer. This enables you to tailor to your need the set of content you make available offline for each device.
Does Box Drive work on mobile devices using iOS or Android?
Box Drive is not a mobile application, however, there is a Box application for iOS and Android devices.
Can I use Spotlight, Finder, Windows Explorer, or Cortana to search files in Box?
No, files and folders are being streamed from Box directly and cannot be indexed by these applications.
Am I able to designate a folder and all its sub-folders to be available offline or is it file by file?
You can only mark folders for offline use. This will make that folder and all its content available when not connected to the internet by downloading the folder.
Please note: You can mark as many folders for offline use as you please up until you have 2GB of storage left on your hard drive.
Does Box Drive support file names that contain special characters?
Box does not support file names with certain special characters.
- File Types Ignored or Blocked by Box Sync and Box Drive
- Microsoft Article: Naming Files, Paths, and Namespaces
Can I use Box Drive as a bulk migration tool?
Box Drive is not suited for mass contents transfer. See Preparing your content for migration for available options when migrating contents to Box.
Will Box Drive ever support viewing more file metadata than just file size, date created, etc.?
The file data can be obtained when the file is fully downloaded (copied out of box folder), but not through Drive due to its functionality through shell extensions. Box Drive does not support metadata which requires inspecting file contents. This is done to prevent unnecessary download of the file from Box since Drive utilizes fetching and caching to interact with content.
The engineering team has no plans to provide metadata through Box Drive in future releases.
What File Types are Supported for Box Drive Preview/Thumbnails?
At this time, the following file types are supported:
- Documents > doc, docx, gdoc, gsheet, gslide, gslides, odp, ods, odt, pdf, ppt, pptx, rtf, wpd, xls, xlsm, xlsx, key, pages, numbers
- Images > ai, bmp, dcm, dicm, eps, gif, idml, indd, indt, inx, jpeg, jpg, png, ps, psd, svg, svs, tif, tiff, tga
- Audio > aac, aifc, aiff, amr, au, flac, m4a, mp3, ogg, ra, wav, wma
- Video > 3g2, 3gp, avi, m2v, m2ts, m4v, mkv, mov, mp4, mpeg, mpg, ogg, mts, qt, wmv