Google and Box have released new file streaming clients for Windows and Mac OS. Google Drive File Stream and Box Drive are available for use now on student personal computers. These new clients make Box and Google storage appear as a network drive to your Mac and Windows computers. Instead of syncing all the files to your computer and taking up disk space, they instead only pull down files when you access them. Changes to files are reflected instantly to the cloud.
To install the newer Box Drive, first remove the older Box Sync client if you have it, and then follow the instructions at https://www.box.com/resources/downloads. You want to install the “Box Drive for Mac/Windows (public beta)” depending if you have a Mac or Windows computer. NOTE: Currently, Box Drive does not allow for offline access, nor can you lock/unlock files at the moment. Those features are expected in the near future.
To install the newer Google Drive File Stream, first remove the older Google Drive for Mac/Windows client, or the current Google Backup and Sync client, if you have them installed. Then, follow the instructions at https://www.google.com/drive/download. You want to select the Get Started box under the “Business – Drive File Stream” section. NOTE: It is very important that if you run an anti-virus product that you exclude the Google Drive File Stream volume from anti-virus scanning. This is a known problem that will potentially bring your computer to a crawl as well as generate unnecessary network traffic.