Live SkyDrive – How To Set Up As Network Drive via Gladinet

Posted on Apr 15, 2009 in Online Storage, Productivity, Test Drive Apps by dee 10 Comments

This post has now been superceded with an updated one. Please go below to see the new post:

Updated Article – Setting up Live SkyDrive with Gladinet 2.1

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Recently I talked about Windows Live SkyDrive, a facility that allows you up to 25gigs of storage space for free. The storage space is available anywhere and while its an excellent facility, it can get cumbersome dealing with uploading files and working through the web based interface.

Ideally, you want to have a folder structure set up on your computer so that you can just navigate through your SkyDrive just like you do any of your other hard drives. Gladinet is a cloud based service that does just that.  It brings online applications and storage to your local machine. Read below for more information on it.

Gladinet is a fully featured service that allows for (amongst others):

• Drive “mounting” (act of setting up an online storage like SkyDrive or Picasa or Google Docs as local hard drives)
• A Cloud based desktop that enables users to use online applications to work on local files.
• Task schedulers to cater for scheduled transfers of data (eg as backup)
• Smart file transfers that allows for encryption, compression and reliability.
• It allows you to upload images without resizing!! (If you use the web interface to upload images, they get resized automatically – this way it treats image files as data, so SkyDrive doesn’t resize or constrain the image in any way).

What we will do today is use Gladinet to “mount” our SkyDrive so that it is available on My Computer.

Prerequisites

you have an existing SkyDrive account. Easy enough to do if you follow my earlier guide: Microsoft SkyDrive – 25 gigs of space for free!

Step 1

The first step would be to download Gladinet onto your machine and install it. There are two versions available on the website (http://www.gladinet.com): a Free Starter one and a Professional Edition. The Professional Edition is on a limited introductory offer, but as it costs money, I will use the free version You can download either of them on the following page: Gladinet Editions Download Page. There is a version for both 32bit and 64bit operating systems (sadly no Linux).

Step 2

Once downloaded, complete the installation process. Select all the defaults (you may wish to change the install location, but apart from that, all else should be as normal).

When you launch the application for the first time, you’ll have an initial “Run Once Initial Settings” for the Cloud desktop.

Here, choose a drive letter that you want to assign to Gladinet and hit OK. In my case I chose “R” as my drive. Leave everything else as is and hit OK.

Important!

If you are running a server operating system (or one which has IIS running), you may get a message that states that Port 80 is being used already. It will ask to install a virtual adapter. Click Yes.

At this point, the Gladinet Virtual Driver will be installed.

If you continue to have an issue installing the virtual adapter, there is a troubleshooting guide in the install folder\WosHome called “GladinetTroubleShoot.pdf”. It may help resolve issues around Gladinet behaving with applications that also use Port 80 (such as Skype or IIS).

In my case, I changed my unassigned port on my local web server to port 81 and it worked fine. There are ways to preserve port 80 and have Gladinet coexist with your web server. Its detailed in the Troubleshooting guide.

Step 3

Assuming you have any possible conflict resolved, Gladinet will start. You can tell from a taskbar mini icon it will place on your start bar and it should show you an initial menu screen.

Click on “Mount Disk Storage or Web Storage As Virtual Directory”

Step 4

This will open up the Virtual Directory Manager.

As we’re adding SkyDrive, select “Windows Live SkyDrive” as the Service Provider.

The dialog box will change slightly to collect your SkyDrive credentials:

At this point you can create a “safe card” (refer to Gladinet for details) or just type in your SkyDrive credentials and click on Add.

Your username is your Windows Live Id (usually same as your MSN Messenger or Hotmail Id)

It will take a while to create the virtual directory and progress will be shown at the bottom of the screen. You may get a “Loading Online Storage Plugin” agreement dialog box. Hit Yes to this.

Step 5

Once its finished, a new Windows Explorer window will open up and show you the contents of your SkyDrive!

At this point you can navigate through the folders just like any other folder on your computer. If you happen to close your Windows Explorer, opening up My Computer later will show you the drive under Network Location (Vista) or Network Drives (Windows 2003).

You can also open up your drives by right clicking the Gladinet mini icon and selecting your drive

Via the same method, I managed to add Google Picasa as well as Google Docs to Gladinet as well.

When you drag a file into your SkyDrive, (if you chose the professional edition), you will be asked if you want to upload immediately or schedule it for later. Additionally, right-clicking on an “office” type document will display and option to read it in an appropriate viewer.

Conclusions

As a simple drag and drop access to your online storage, it does what’s asked of it. It gave me a network drive that allowed me to access my online data stores and i can easily upload and download documents to and from my drives.

Currently, its one of the best ways to really make use of SkyDrive without having to go through a web explorer.

You can continue to explore Gladinet on your own by right clicking its mini-icon and checking out the various options.

You may also wish to read our guide on other storage and collaboration solutions. Click the following post to have a look (opens in a new window):
11 Free Services for Online Storage, Sharing and Collaboration

Relevant Links

• Introduction to Live SkyDrive – how to log on and use SkyDrive
• Gladinet Home Page
• Gladinet Blog
• Gladinet Edition Comparisons – between Starter, Professional and Premium editions.

Tags: Cool Apps, Gladinet, Live Essentials, Online Document Storage, Productivity, SkyDrive, Test Drive, Test Drive Apps, Tutorials

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  Sahan Nov 5 2009 - 6:38 pm Reply

  Great it worked ! Thanks for the post

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  Zan Nov 14 2009 - 3:21 am Reply

  Hi, I installed Gladinet free for use with Skydrive, but only after I tried out the new SkyDrive Explorer. Whilst I find Gladinet is great for doing the actual uploading, it seems that when I try to move or delete files from my skydrive, it seems to transfer them again and is not done instantaneously. SkyDrive does not have this issue? Also a weird thing, I created a sub-folder through Gladinet and when I refresh the parent directory in SkyDrive Explorer, the new sub-folder does not appear! I don’t know if that is due to me currently transferring a file with SkyDrive Explorer, but it is weird. Finally, I wish you could go into more detail in your guide regarding Chunking and whether this is effective for working around the 50MB Skydrive limit. Through the Gladinet Virtual Directory Manager Skydrive settings there is an option to enable chunking. Now this is not set at the maximum skydrive limit of 50MB, you have to therefore go into your Gladinet Settings and find the Chunk and Compression section and change the chunk size. I am however unsure what to set the chunk and segment size at, and what the end files will look like compared to manually spanning zip files.

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  dee Nov 15 2009 - 9:04 am Reply

  Hi Zan,

  Gladinet uses queuing mechanisms for its file operations (including copying and new folders), and works asynchronously. As such, you may have to wait till the pending operations are over to see the files/folders in your drive.

  I did do a quick guide on SkyDrive Explorer for people who may be interested: http://www.newbtech.com/2009/11/skydrive-explorer-integrates-skydrive-as-a-network-drive.html

  Chunking is supported only in the premium and professional editions of Gladinet (ie, you need to have the paid version). I limited my post here on the “free” version.

  I do have a professional license that the Gladinet folks were kind enough to give me. I’ll do some testing and set up a post on how to enable larger than 50mb file transfers.

  Dee

  .-= dee´s last blog ..SkyDrive Explorer integrates SkyDrive As A Network Drive =-.

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  pakman Jan 8 2010 - 6:54 am Reply

  Works Like a charm :) please add other sites like Mediafire,megaupload, or rapid share.
  .-= pakman´s last blog ..Gardens of Paradise =-.

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