Technical Information for Box Drive Administrators

This article contains information on the directories that Box Drive uses to store items on your machine, as well as important details about the Box Drive cache. 

Box Drive Directories (where Box Drive stores items on your machine):

• Your Box folder:
  • Windows: C:\Users\<USERNAME>\Box
  • MacOS:
    • ~/Library/CloudStorage/Box-Box
• Logs:
  • Windows: C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Local\Box\Box\logs
  • MacOS: /Users/<USERNAME>/Library/Logs/Box/Box
• The Box Drive application itself:
  • Windows: C:\Program Files\Box\Box\Box.exe
  • MacOS: /Applications/Box.app
• Cache folder:
  • Windows: C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Local\Box\Box\cache
  • MacOS: /Users/<USERNAME>/Library/Application Support/Box/Box/cache

Verifying your storage amount

• Do not use the Box folder properties to determine anything about your Box account.
  • On MacOS, the Box folder's Capacity and Available space are the same values as the Macintosh HD drive values
  • On Windows, the Box folder's Used space, Free space, and Capacity are the same values as the C:\ drive values.
    • The Properties value of any sub-folder within Box Drive displays the value represented on Box.com -- not the amount of space taken up on a computer's C: Drive.
• To determine the actual local space that Box Drive takes up, examine the properties of Box's cache folder:
  • Windows: \C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Local\Box\Box\cache
  • MacOS: /Users/<USERNAME>/Library/Application Support/Box/Box/cache
    • Run the following command in Terminal to get the space taken up by Box Drive cache on the local device: du -sh ~/Library/CloudStorage/Box-Box

Cache information and behavior

• When you add a file to Box Drive, Box copies the file into the Drive cache folder, which creates a local copy of the file.  So, when adding larger files to Drive, be sure to provide enough local storage for the local copy of the file.
• When you open a file in your Box folder, Box Drive downloads the file to the mount point (folder location above) to open the file.
• Box Drive deletes a cached file:
  • When the file cache has not been modified for the past 30 days -- that is, no modifications are made to the cached file.
    • • You can reduce this duration om Windows. (To adjust the cache duration, please see steps below.)
  • If the same file on Box is updated with a new version on Box.
    • • In this case, Box Drive's locally cached file is no longer up to date, and Box deletes it. Box Drive does not re-download the file until you re-open the file via your Box folder.
  • If you reach the cache size limit.  In this case, Box removes first those cached files that have gone the longest without being modified.
  • When you log out of Box Drive.
• Box Drive deletes a cached file that is available offline if you log out of Box Drive.
• Box Drive's maximum cache size limit is set to 50% of your available local disk space or 25 GB, whichever is smaller.  Box Drive requires at least 1 GB of free space to function properly. (To do this, please see steps below.)
  • Modifying the maximum cache size is supported on Windows. It is not supported on MacOS.
  • Files marked for offline access do not count against this limit. You can fill up your hard drive until you have 2 GB of remaining space.
• Box Drive cannot delete a cached online-only file in the following cases (in these cases it's possible the limit can be exceeded):
  • the online-only file has changes that never uploaded to Box
  • another program is preventing Box Drive from deleting the online-only file.
• Do not use or modify files in the cache folder. Doing so may result in unexpected behavior. Always access your content through the Box folder.
• Box Drive cache is not encrypted, and is removed automatically when you uninstall Box Drive on Windows.  On MacOS, deleting Box Drive does not delete the cache.  Therefore, Box provides a Bash shell script, uninstall_box_drive, with the Mac version of Box Drive that enables you to delete the cache.
• Logging out of Box Drive deletes all cached files, (including offline files and offline preferences) unsupported files, and all log files.
• It is not possible to completely disable Box Drive's caching functionality.

Modifying the maximum cache limit (Windows Only):

1. Add a new DWORD registry value called MaximumCacheSize under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Box\Box.
2. MaximumCacheSize should be set to an integer value representing the new cache limit in GB (for example, setting MaximumCacheSize's value to 6 would mean the cache max is 6GB).
3. Quit and re-launch Box Drive after making this change.

Modifying the maximum cache duration limit:

You can change Box Drive's maximum cache duration limit from the default 30 days by following the steps below. You can set it to any whole number between 1 and 30.  In most cases we do not recommend reducing the cache duration, as that causes Box to delete the cached file sooner. If you access this online-only file again, the file downloads to the cache again. Setting a low cache duration value causes Box to repeatedly delete and download files based on user activity, and can strain your network bandwidth, in turn causing a degraded customer experience.

Windows:

1. Add a new DWORD registry value called MaximumCacheAge under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Box\Box.
2. Set MaximumCacheAge to a value representing the new cache limit in number of days.  For example, setting MaximumCacheAge's value to 6 means Box deletes the file from the cache in 6 days if it has not been edited.
3. Quit and re-launch Box Drive after you make this change.

This new limit applies to all Windows users on the machine. Get more information on modifying Window's registry.

To revert the limit, delete the MaximumCacheAge registry value and re-launch Box Drive.

1. Open the Terminal
2. Run the command below. Replace Cache_Limit_Here with an integer representing the new cache duration in number of days:
   defaults write com.box.desktop MaximumCacheAge -int Cache_Limit_Here
3. Quit and re-launch Box Drive after you run this command.

This new limit applies only to the Mac user who ran the command. It does not apply to all Mac users on the machine.

To revert the limit:

1. Run the following command in Terminal:
   defaults delete com.box.desktop MaximumCacheAge
2. Re-launch Box Drive.

Disabling the Search Hotkey

Are you already using the Search hotkey with another application, and do not want to apply it in the context of Box Drive? With Box Drive v2.5 +, you can disable the hotkey that Box Drive uses to launch the Box custom Search UI. To do this:

In a Windows environment

1. Create a DWORD registry entry called GlobalHotKeyCharacter with a value of 0 under: HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Box/Box
2. Reboot Box Drive.

In a Mac environment

1. Create a boolean preference under com.box.desktop.ui called DisableSearchShortcut set to true .
• To do this from terminal run the following command:
• defaults write com.box.desktop.ui DisableSearchShortcut -bool true
2. Reboot Box Drive.

Related Links

Using Box Drive Basics

Installing and Updating Box Drive

Large Scale Deployments of Box Drive

Enabling Box Drive for your Users

Enabling the Mark for Offline Feature for Your Enterprise

Uninstalling Box Sync Using the Box Drive Installer

Configuring the Default Box Drive Location