6.3.4 Network Drive WebDav
Dav protocol support allows you to use your Cloud storage as a network drive or even access it directly through a browser. To do this, you should first configure Web Disk in your KeepData panel.
Setting up Web Drive
Go to the control panel KeepData and open the Web Disk tab.
In the open tab, you can configure the home directory, which is available when connecting using the Dav protocol. The directory is set up from your primary user’s home directory. Simply put, to provide access to a directory along the path /WebDisk, you just need to write WebDisk in the Directory line:
.
The address at which your network drive is accessible will be indicated in the line Available at address.
Examples of connections using Dav
There are many different ways to use the Web Drive of your Cloud Storage. Let’s look at the most common ones.
To connect via the Dav protocol, the access data of your main user is used, the initial value of which can be found using the Welcome button.
Directly through your browser
In the Web Disk tab, you can see a direct access link to your disk, which can be used in a browser in the Available at address column.
After copying it and pasting it into the browser, you will be asked to enter your access data. After entering the login and password of your main user, you will be able to gain direct access to the previously specified directory:
As a network drive Windows
In all modern versions of the Windows operating system, you can map a network drive using native OS tools.
Let’s take Windows 10 as an example.
1. Open Explorer by pressing the key combination Win + E or through the Start menu.
2. Select This PC.
3. In the top panel, click Map network drive.
4. Select a free letter for your network drive from the drop-down list. In the Folder field, enter the path to the network folder (for example, \\server.keepdata.thehost.ua\webdav\exampleuser):
5. Be sure to check the Connect using different credentials checkbox. Check the Recover at logon checkbox if you want the disk to be connected automatically every time you start your computer.
6. Click Done. A user and password entry window will appear, in which you need to specify access parameters for the main user of your Cloud Storage:
Now the network drive will appear in Explorer and will be available for use.
Unfortunately, using a network drive can be inconvenient without additional add-ons in some versions of Windows.
Important: possible problems when using a Windows network drive and their solutions:
Problem: inability to transfer files larger than 4 GB
When using WebDAV on some versions of Windows (escpecially older ones), you may be unable to transfer files larger than 4 GB. To resolve this issue, you can try changing the settings in the Windows Registry Editor:
1. Open Registry Editor. To do this, press the key combination Win + R, type regedit and press Enter.
2. Go to the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WebClient\Parameters
3. Find the FileSizeLimitInBytes parameter. If it doesn’t exist, create a new value of type DWORD (32-bit value).
4. Change the value of the FileSizeLimitInBytes parameter to whatever you need. For example, to set the limit to 10 GB (10x1024x1024x1024 = 10737418240 bytes):
- Binary format:
10737418240 - Hexadecimal format:
280000000
5. After changing the value, restart your computer for the changes to take effect.
Problem: an error occurs when connecting The network name cannot be found
Check if the WebClient service is running in Windows Services. Enable it and, if necessary, set its startup setting to Automatic. Windows Services themselves can be found in the Start menu (Services) or opened using the Win + R key combination and typing services.msc.
This can also be done on the command line:
sc config "WebClient" start=auto
sc start "WebClient"
Then reconnect the network drive.
Problem: WebClient service is not installed on Windows Server OS
On Windows Server, the components necessary to use network drives may not be present at all, which is why you will see errors when you try to connect.
In this case, it is necessary to perform the following algorithm:
1. Launch PowerShell. The program can be found in the Start menu (Windows PowerShell) or launched by Win + R and typing powershell into the run form.
2. Install WebDAV Redirector with the following command. After installation, you will need to restart the server:
Install-WindowsFeature WebDAV-Redirector –Restart
3. After the reboot, check that the WebDAV-Redirector component is installed:
Get-WindowsFeature WebDAV-Redirector | Format-Table –Autosize
4. Two new services will appear in the system - WebClient and MRxDAV. We enable autorun for them:
Set-Service WebClient -StartupType Automatic
Set-Service MRxDAV -StartupType Automatic
5. And we start the services in the current session:
Start-Service WebClient
Start-Service MRxDAV
The services necessary for the network drive to operate are installed and running, and you can connect your Web drive to the server.
As a network drive using a third-party client
Connecting on Windows is also possible using custom clients instead of Microsoft’s built-in tools.
Let’s look at the example of RaiDrive:
1. Download and install the appropriate RaiDrive distribution from the official website.
2. Launch the program and click Add in the top right corner.
3. Select storage type NAS -> WebDav. Provide all required connection information. In the address, indicate the server address, for example server.keepdata.thehost.ua, and in the connection directory the address of your Web Disk folder, for example webdav/example:
4. If all the information is correct, you will successfully connect the network drive to your file system.
As a network drive Linux
There are many different ways to mount a network drive on Linux systems.
In this example, we will show the connection using davfs. If you have root rights, this is done with one command:
sudo mount.davfs -o users,uid=systemuser,username=webdavuser https://server.thehost.ua/webdav/user/folder /home/systemuser/folder
Where:
systemuser– the user of your server who will become the owner of the mounted disk.webdavuser– the name of the main user of your KeepData Cloud Storage.https://server.thehost.ua/webdav/user/folder– path to your Web Disk/home/systemuser/folder– the path where the disk will be mounted.
After entering, you will need to enter the password for your KeepData user.
You can then unmount the disk with the following command:
sudo umount /home/systemuser/folder
As a protocol for remote connection
Some clients, such as WinSCP, support the use of WebDav as a protocol for remote connections.
The process will be similar to that of any similar connection, such as FTP. The main difference is the access data, which you can see in the Web Disk section:
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