CTERA Drive Connect

CTERA Drive Connect enables you to easily view all files on your CTERA Portal storage in Windows File Explorer or macOS Finder. Using CTERA Drive Connect you mount your CTERA Portal cloud drive as a disk in Windows File Explorer or macOS Finder so you can work on it as a local volume.

Documentation consists of:

Release Notes

Drive Connect version 4.17.1 (22545)

New and Improved Features

Write operations with unsupported characters in the filename are prevented.
Performance improvements when opening Microsoft PowerPoint files.
Temporary files are now saved in the cache location, which is set in Preferences > Sync.
Data that exceeds the local cache size is now evicted every hour instead of every 24 hours.

Resolved Issues

Windows and macOS

When there is a problem connecting to a portal using SSO a popup window is displayed to clarify the issue.
Concurrent mount and unmount operations resulted in the mount being stuck for a few minutes.
The error that was displayed when opening a read-only file is now only displayed if you try to save the file.
When opening a read-only file a temp file was created and the red cross overlay icon remained on the file.
Data that was being uploaded while the folder was being modified was being deleted from the cache.

Windows

Windows File Explorer became unresponsive after attempting to open a video stub file.
Moving an offline file could crash CTERA Drive Connect.

macOS

A popup error window was displayed in macOS Finder whenever Internet connectivity was lost.
Copying a large file from macOS Finder to CTERA Drive Connect or unzipping a large file in CTERA Drive Connect, failed, with error 79
Copying a file from CTERA Drive Connect to the macOS desktop failed with error 38
Opening a read-only file removed the file from the local view and generated random folders.
Favorite item in the Finder sidebar were not removed for open connections when quitting the application.

Known Issues

When working with some read-only files on a macOS machine, random empty folders are created. These folders can be deleted and they are not synced to the portal.
Copying files to the root level of your mount causes the sync to pause until the files are removed.
In some cases, when connected to a portal version 8.2.1500.8.6 or earlier, SSO might not prompt the client mount. If this happens, enter the following URL in the browser: https://<portal_address>/ServicesPortal/activate?scheme=x-cteradriveconnect-action:websso

Drive Connect version 4.16.3 (22374)

Resolved Issues

The folder badge showed In Progress after selecting a folder to keep offline.
Keeping files offline did not work consistently.
An error was displayed when renaming a read-only subfolder.
Synchronization could not be resumed when it was paused by a network error.
Some users were getting an Adobe Premiere project modified error.
After a server connection was interrupted, an error message was displayed in macOS Finder.
A duplicate conflict file was generated after exporting a video from Adobe Premiere.
The files from the portal were not always displayed in Microsoft File Explorer nor macOS Finder.

Drive Connect version 4.16.2 (22310)

New and Improved Features

A notification is displayed when sync is paused.

Resolved Issues

After opening a zip file, an empty folder was created which was synced to the portal.
The mount disconnected after inactivity for a long time.
Some users were getting an Adobe Premiere project modified error.

Known Issues

Renaming cloud folders or files on a portal or edge filer that are cached locally is treated as a move operation by Drive Connect. The local data is removed from the PC and the renamed data is displayed as stubs.
When the portal does not support NT-ACLS, deleting a cloud folder from Drive Connect does not delete all the content in the portal and after a few seconds the folder is restored on the Drive Connect side.
When there are problems with networking stability, the sync status sometimes changes to pause.
After opening a zip file in Drive Connect, an empty folder with a name unconnected to the zip name is created in drive connect and synced to the portal.
The client sometimes stops working even though this is not reflected in the user interface.
Some cloud folders cannot be kept offline.
If the external hard disk is disconnected and reconnected, the mount opens empty.
Adobe Indesign projects that are saved offline require a connection to the Internet to be opened.
macOS platforms
- The stub icon does not change when opening files larger than ~250KB.
- The stub icon is not removed after a file is downloaded and opened.
Windows platforms
- In some cases, upgrading CTERA Drive Connect might prevent the About window being opened or to edit existing connections. If this occurs, you have to reinstall the application.

Drive Connect version 4.16.1 (22256)

New and Improved Features

(macOS platforms) NFS read throughput has been improved.

Resolved Issues

The following issues only occurred in rare scenarios:
- Temp file generated when using Adobe After Effects were not removed from disk.
- User lost changes to work done on files in Adobe InDesign.
- Syncing files to and from the portal did not work.
- Mount was empty due to an authentication timeout.
- Drive Connect users were regularly receiving server connections interrupted.
- The cloud folder was stuck in syncing mode when it was saved offline.
- You were unable to keep folder offline.
(macOS platforms) You could not dismiss the share prompt window.

Drive Connect version 4.16.0 (22153)

Resolved Issues

Syncing entered a loop and folders were deleted.

Note

This critical issue might have caused other issues like offline files getting randomly removed.
(macOS platforms) Mounted volumes were not displayed on the desktop.

Drive Connect version 4.15.7 (22047)

NT-ACL and WORM support has been implemented on the Windows Client level when connected to a CTERA Portal 8.2.x and higher.

The following issues have been resolved:

Windows and macOS platforms:
- Syncing paused intermittently even without user intervention.
- File operations were delayed due to a limit in the connections to the portal.
- The drive connect mount was stuck when a large file was kept offline.
- After renaming the cloud folder in CTERA Drive Connect, the stub file disappeared.
- Application was stuck in Pause mode.
- Many conflict folders were created.
macOS platform:
- When clicking on show in an error notification, nothing was displayed.
- An error was displayed when trying to open Adobe Premiere project from the Drive Connect mount.
- When copying a large file between folders inside the Drive Connect mount, the mount was stuck.

Drive Connect version 4.15.3 (21820)

Performance when listing folders has been improved.
When the portal is not reachable, synchronization is paused.

The following bug has been fixed:

The issue for users running macOS 13 or macOS 14 on Intel that occurred when mounting volumes has been fixed.

Drive Connect version 4.15.1 (21679)

The Update preferences settings for macOS includes Check Automatically download and install updates. When checked new versions are automatically installed when the user quits CTERA Drive Connect. See Update Settings.
When trying to sync files with illegal characters or too long names, a clear error message is issued stating that you cannot copy some of these items because their names are too long for the destination volume. You are given the choice of canceling the copy action or skipping the illegal files and continue copying the other files.

The following bugs have been fixed:

Indexing issues on both Windows and macOS. As a result, the constant refresh of the folder structure, when changing a directory no longer happens.
Exporting mp4 projects in Adobe Premier no longer results in a strange file extension.
When the server is offline you cannot connect the volume with the default path.

Drive Connect version 4.14.4.21440

When using Adobe Illustrator: Linked Adobe Photoshop files (PSD files) can now be opened.

Drive Connect version 4.14.3

Improvements when using Adobe products:

Duplicate and conflict files were left behind after encoding with Adobe Premier.
Problems synchronizing files saved from Adobe After Effects have been fixed.

This version fixes the following:

New folders that were downloaded recursively were located in a folder marked as Keep Offline on Local Disk.
The modification date not updated after saving Microdsoft documents, such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel.

Drive Connect version 4.14.0

The remaining local disk space is displayed in Windows Explorer or macOS Finder.
While syncing with the portal is paused, there are no attempts to retrieve files from the portal.
Bug fixes:
- Incorrect CTERA Drive Connect versions were being pushed to customer
  Note
  Customers that still experience this issue must do the following:
  1. Uninstall the CTERA Drive Connect.
  2. Run defaults delete com.ctera
  3. Reinstall the new CTERA Drive Connect from www.ctera.com.
- If CTERA Drive Connect freezes, the impact on Windows Explorer or macOS Finder is less.
- The following performance problems have been fixed:
  - The transfer throughput for large file uploads.
  - High memory allocation when copying large files and the failure to open files in AutoCAD, both in a Windows environment.
  - The Disconnect and Delete buttons mismatch for bookmarks and the Show in Finder relating to the volume and not the content, both in a macOS environment.

Drive Connect versions 4.13.x

With the Windows version, folder content can be refreshed from the portal immediately by clicking F5. For full details, see Working With CTERA Drive Connect.
You can disconnect from the portal from within the connection window.

Windows macOS
Folder content is refreshed from the portal periodically. For full details, see Working With CTERA Drive Connect.
The Copy URL and Open URL right-click menu options in Windows Explorer and macOS Finder now access the content in the portal preview server. See The Right-click Menu.
When defining a connection to a portal, the connection mode option has been removed and the only option in Sync preferences for Connect Mode is Smart Synchronization. See Sync Settings.
In Sync preferences Purge files in cache not opened after has been set to the recommended 30 days and Limit cache size to has been set to the recommended 100GB. See Sync Settings.
Temporary files from Adobe Creative Suite were added to the list of files excluded from synchronization.
Bug fixes:
- CPU improvements on macOS machines.
- Windows no longer block access to the taskbar.
- The time taken to delete files has been improved.
- In rare cases, the status bar icon on macOS machines stopped being displayed.
- Saving file applications could have created an additional backup file.
- Minor fixes.