Shared Folder VS Drive

[pajczur]

Hello,
sorry for that question. Of course I've seen many posts about comparison Drive with File Station or with Cloud Station.

But I still can't understand what functionality gives me Drive over straight functionality of Shared Folder.
After all the Shared Folder connected to other devices has the same data on each of those devices. So it looks like the synchronisation is already achieved.

So what other features I can find in Drive package which can't be achieved by using Shared Folder?

I lastly removed Drive from my DSM because it was eating a lot of space on my storage. With Shared Folder there is no such issue. So why use the Drive?

For any help great thanks in advance.

 

[Rusty]

Best to read up on Drive server features and judge for yourself if that’s the tool you want/need to use.

There are features that are exclusive to Drive that you might use.

Read up 1st.

 

[fredbert]

Synology Drive:

• Is similar to Dropbox / Box / OneDrive.
• Cloud Station was the previous incarnation of Synology Drive.
• Provides access and desktop sync to a user's /home/Drive folder.
• Provides access to NAS Shared Folders that have been setup as Team Folders in the Drive Admin Console.
• Has ability to retain version histories of file changes.
• Is required if you want to us Moments (/home/Drive/Moments) and some other packages, e.g. Office.
• In addition to DSM's metadata that is stored for files and folders, Drive also has its own database which can grow quite large: a lot of which is down to version histories.

File Station:

• Is a web portal front-end to traditional network file sharing, such as SMB and AFP.
• Enables setting up mounts to remote file sharing servers.

They all provide access to the same folders and files that user has access to via other methods. Notes:

• Drive has to be configured to allow access to Shared Folders using the Admin Console.
• Drive is limited when accessing a user's home folder to just /home/Drive, e.g. it cannot access /home/music or /home/photo

 

[pajczur]

Great thanks for all your replies.