Online hard drive, virtual hard drive, cloud storage as a drive — three names for the same thing: storage that doesn’t sit in your machine but feels like it does. We run one ourselves with storageDRIVE, but we’ve also spent years advising people coming from elsewhere or heading elsewhere. Here are the seven points that actually matter when comparing providers — including the spots where we ourselves are not the best choice.
The terms first
- Online hard drive / virtual hard drive: storage you mount as a drive in your computer’s file manager (via SMB or WebDAV). Files live only at the provider; your machine stays empty.
- Sync service (the Dropbox principle): a local folder gets mirrored. Everything is available offline, but takes up local space.
- Good providers offer both — then you choose per use case.
1. Where does the data live — and who owns the provider?
“Servers in Germany” alone isn’t enough. If the operator is a US corporation or one of its subsidiaries, the US CLOUD Act applies: US authorities can demand the data, even if the server is in Frankfurt. So check two things: where the servers are, and who is named in the legal notice. A German provider with German servers is subject to the GDPR and the German BDSG — with no detour through a US parent company.
2. How does the storage reach your machine?
The difference between a real online hard drive and a web upload form is the protocols. Ask specifically:
- SMB — mounts the storage as a perfectly normal drive, on Mac, Windows and Linux with built-in tools. The gold standard, and far from every provider offers it.
- WebDAV — the HTTPS alternative, gets through strict company networks too.
- SFTP/FTPS — for scripts and automated uploads.
- Browser access — important for other people’s machines: is there a full file manager on the web, or just an upload form?
Bonus question for Mac users: does the storage accept Time Machine as a backup target? That only works with real SMB.
3. Price per TB — and what the fine print says
Convert every plan to its price per TB and month, otherwise you’re comparing apples to oranges. And check the tiering: some providers get more expensive per TB the more you book — it should be the other way around, or at least flat. Hidden items to look out for: traffic limits, fees for downloads (“egress”), extra charges for protocol access.
4. Recycle bin, versions, backup — three different things
- Recycle bin: saves you from accidental deletion. The minimum.
- Versioning: saves you from accidental overwrites — important if you work directly on the drive.
- Backup by the provider: saves you when something goes wrong at the provider itself. Ask whether it exists, how often it runs, and whether it lives at a second location. By the way, “RAID” is not a backup — it only protects against disk failure, not against deletion, ransomware or a fire.
5. Encryption — and the zero-knowledge trade-off
At-rest encryption (data encrypted on the disks) and encrypted transfer should be standard. Zero-knowledge encryption — the provider fundamentally cannot read your data — is a real plus for highly sensitive material, but depending on the provider it costs convenience: limited browser previews, more awkward sharing, often no drive mounting. In 95% of cases, the combination of at-rest encryption and a provider under the GDPR is the practical route. If you want more, encrypt selectively yourself, for instance with Cryptomator — that works on any online hard drive.
6. Contract term and cancellation
Cancel monthly should be the norm. Watch out for teaser deals with a 24-month commitment and a price jump after the first year — with storage, you then pay that jump for years.
7. Can you get back out?
The most important question is best asked before moving in: do you get all your data back out via standard protocols (SMB, WebDAV, SFTP), or only through the provider’s app? If export only works through a proprietary tool, that’s vendor lock-in with advance warning.
Where storageDRIVE stands on this
Straight talk about our own product, point by point: a German provider, all data on our own hardware at three German locations, daily backups across locations. SMB 3, WebDAV, SFTP, FTPS, a full file manager in the browser, Time Machine target. Cancel monthly, price per TB flat instead of tiered upward — only the smallest plan sits slightly above it; the current plans are on the product page. What we do not have: zero-knowledge encryption (see point 5 — Cryptomator runs on it without issues) and multi-user plans with shared storage — for that, Nextcloud Hosting is the right choice.
Frequently asked questions
Is an online hard drive the same as cloud storage? Cloud storage is the umbrella term. Online hard drive refers to the usage form “as a drive on your machine” — instead of only an app or browser.
Isn’t an external USB drive enough? For backups at the same location: yes, until the apartment burns down or the drive disappears along with the laptop bag. An online hard drive is the second location the 3-2-1 backup rule demands — and it’s reachable from any device.
How fast does my internet need to be? For working with documents, any DSL line will do. With large files (video, RAW photos), what matters most is the upload — that’s usually the bottleneck on DSL. Better not to push your first large collection through your own line; we accept mailed-in drives, for example, and upload them over our connection.
What’s next
First login to DSM
What you receive after ordering and how to log in to your storageDRIVE account for the first time.
Account and quota — how your storageDRIVE storage works
One plan, one user account, a fixed quota: what counts toward the quota, what happens when it's full, and how upgrades work.
File Station — the file manager in your browser
The classic file manager in DSM. Upload, download, creating folders, ZIP creation, previews, sharing links.
Mounting storageDRIVE as a drive (SMB)
How to connect your storageDRIVE via SMB as a drive — in the Mac Finder, Windows Explorer and as a mount on Linux. Step by step, including auto-mount and Time Machine.