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NS Cloud Drive — Visual User Guide & Interface Walkthrough

Welcome to the NS Cloud Drive User Guide. This document provides an in-depth visual tour and operational walkthrough of all core features, screens, and workflows in the application.

1. Disks Dashboard (Main Screen)

The Disks Dashboard is the primary hub of NS Cloud Drive. It provides real-time visibility into all configured cloud accounts, active Windows mount points, and quick management actions.

Disks Dashboard

Key Interface Elements:

  • Header Status Banner: Displays overall mount status across all accounts (e.g., All 3 drives connected). Shows interactive badges for each mounted drive letter (T:, I:, G:).
  • Toolbar Actions:
    • + Add Cloud Disk: Launches the provider connection dialog to connect a new Google Drive or TeraBox account.
    • ⇄ Transfer Files: Opens the Cloud-to-Cloud Transfer dialog to transfer files directly between connected accounts.
    • ⇄ Transfers: Opens the durable transfer queue and cryptographic history modal.
    • Refresh: Manually triggers a health and mount status probe across all virtual disks.
  • Drive Cards:
    • Account Details: Shows provider type (Google Drive or TeraBox), user display name, and registered email or account ID.
    • Mount Status Pill: Green dot indicator (● Mounted (G:)) confirms active WinFsp filesystem integration.
    • Mount / Disconnect Button: Toggle button to mount or safely disconnect virtual drives on demand.
    • Drive Letter Selector: Select and assign preferred available Windows drive letters.
    • Open Explorer Button: Immediately opens Windows File Explorer at the virtual disk root.
    • Account Settings & Reordering: Configure account-specific options or drag cards to reorder.

2. Native Windows File Explorer Integration

Once mounted, all cloud disks appear directly inside Windows 11 File Explorer under Devices and drives just like physical storage volumes.

Windows Explorer Multi-Account Virtual Drives

Native Windows Features:

  • Direct Volume Letter Assignment: Each account receives its own designated drive letter (e.g., G:, I:, T:).
  • Active Capacity Gauges: Real-time storage consumption and remaining gigabytes/terabytes display natively in Windows Explorer.
  • Provider Branding: Official high-resolution cloud icons (Google Drive, TeraBox) display in File Explorer for instant visual recognition.
  • Direct Shell Integration: Drag-and-drop file copying, standard right-click context menus, and on-demand streaming on file open.

3. Cloud Transfer Center & History

The Transfer Center tracks all file transfers, local SSD staging progress, background uploads, and cryptographic confirmation results.

Transfer Center & History

Core Features:

  • Durable Queue Lifecycle: Tracks files through staging, streaming, remote confirmation, and eviction.
  • Cryptographic Verification: Confirms uploads against provider hashes (e.g., MD5 for Google Drive, SHA-1 chunk verification for TeraBox) before marking transfers as complete.
  • Category Filters: Easily filter records by All Transfers, Active, Queued, Completed, and Failed.
  • Safe Recovery: If a transfer is interrupted by a system restart, clear status indicators guide you to safely resume or re-upload files without risk of data corruption.

4. On-Demand Analytics & Performance Monitor

The Analytics Dashboard provides comprehensive hardware resource, network latency, and filesystem health metrics gathered strictly on demand—guaranteeing zero background CPU polling when idle.

Analytics Dashboard

Telemetry Breakdown:

  • Drive Mounts: Probes each active WinFsp NTFS mount root for real-time filesystem responsiveness (Healthy (Active) vs Degraded).
  • Active Transfers: Real-time count of streaming and queued operations.
  • SSD Local Cache Quota: Measures current cache utilization against configured maximum limits (e.g., 0 GB / 10 GB) and available host drive storage.
  • Network Latency & Bandwidth Probes: Measures live ICMP round-trip ping to public gateways and reports active streaming throughput.
  • Resource Footprint: Displays current process RAM usage, working set size, and background worker state.

5. Options & Appearance Settings

The Options screen allows customization of visual themes, SSD staging folder locations, cache eviction rules, and Windows operating system integration.

Options & Settings

Configuration Options:

  • General Integration:
    • Run NS Cloud Drive at Windows login: Registers automatic startup via Windows Run registry key.
    • Minimize to system tray on close: Keeps cloud drives mounted in the background when the main window is closed.
    • Automatically mount cloud drives on startup: Restores all configured virtual drives upon login.
  • Appearance & Themes:
    • Pure White: High-contrast, clean modern light theme with refined borders and typography.
    • Pure Black: Deep OLED dark theme with vibrant color-coded status badges.
  • Cache Management:
    • Cache Folder: Configurable dedicated high-speed SSD location (default: D:\CloudCache).
    • Maximum Cache Quota: Set cache limits from 5 GB up to 100 GB.
    • Post-Transfer Cleanup Policy: Automatically evict completed files using size-dependent inactivity TTLs (5m for <1GB, 20m for 1-3GB, 45m for >3GB) with strict Test-FileInUse lock protection.

6. Security & Audit Diagnostic Logs

The Logs view offers full transparency into application events, provider session validations, and mount operations while guaranteeing absolute privacy.

Security & Diagnostic Logs

Security & Privacy Protections:

  • Real-Time Sanitization: All OAuth access tokens, refresh tokens, passwords, and session cookies are automatically replaced with [REDACTED] before logs are written to disk.
  • Severity & Account Filtering: Filter events by Info, Warning, or Error, or isolate logs for a specific cloud account.
  • Local Bounded Storage: Logs are stored strictly on your local machine in %LOCALAPPDATA%\NSCloudDrive\logs and automatically rotate at 2 MB to prevent unbounded disk usage.
  • Zero Remote Telemetry: NS Cloud Drive never transmits log files, personal filenames, or diagnostic traces to external third-party servers.

7. Community Discussion & Support

Have questions about setup, configuration, or want to suggest new features for future releases?