Cloud Station Drive Help

Note: Cloud Station Server will now be succeeded by a new application, Synology Drive Server, which covers all of the original key functionalities. We recommend upgrading to Synology Drive Server for optimal performance and various new features. Please visit this tutorial to learn more about the feature differences and how to upgrade before you start.

Cloud Station is a file sharing service that allows you to sync files between a centralized Synology product and multiple client computers, mobiles and Synology products. To seamlessly sync your data among the Synology product and your computers, the Synology product has to be chosen as the host server, and the rest of the paired computers will act as the client devices. Before syncing files with your client computers, Cloud Station Server package is required to be installed on the host Synology product, while the client application (Cloud Station Drive for computer clients, available at Synology's Download Center) has to be installed on each client computer you want to sync with.

Note:

To install and manage Cloud Station Server on your Synology product, log in as admin (or a user belonging to the administrators group), go to Package Center to install Cloud Station Server, and then click the Help button at the top-right corner for information.

Configure Syncing Service

Download and install the Cloud Station application from Synology's Download Center and then follow the instructions in this section to configure the syncing service provided by Cloud Station.

To set up Cloud Station Drive:

On your Windows computer, go to Start > All Programs > Synology Cloud Station Drive to launch the setup wizard.
On your Mac, go to Finder > Applications > Synology Cloud Station Drive to launch the wizard.
On your Linux computer, go to Dash > Applications > Internet > Synology Cloud Station Drive to launch the wizard.
Click Next to continue.
Do the following to configure the Synology product you want to sync with, and then click Next:
1. Enter the IP address or QuickConnect ID, username and password of your Synology product. For domain users, use your domain name\username to log in. For LDAP users, use "username@Base_DN" to log in. You can also log in with IPv6.
2. If you are unable to connect to the Synology product, click the Proxy button to open the proxy setting window. Fill in your settings and re-connect to the Synology product.
3. You can also click the search icon on the right, and Cloud Station Drive will automatically search for other Synology product within your LAN.
Select the local and remote folders you wish to sync. If you wish to further adjust sync settings, please click Advanced.
- You can specify folders and files you don't want to sync in Folder and File Filter:
  - Maximum file size: If a file is bigger than your specified size, it will not be backed up.
  - File name: Any file with the designated file name will not be backed up.
  - File extension: Any designated file extension will not be backed up. Add *.extension to the table, e.g. *.iso.
- You can also Sync mode to two-way sync or just to download data from Cloud Station Server.
- Uncheck Enable advanced consistency check to reduce the time and system resources required in file comparison. This lowers the accuracy of file comparison.
- Click Apply to save your settings.
Click Next and Finish to complete the setup.

Note:

To find your QuickConnect ID, log in to DSM as admin (or a user belonging to the administrators group), and then go to Control Panel > QuickConnect to check the information.
If you are unable to connect to the Synology product or authorize the connection with your user credentials, check your network settings, and make sure your access to Cloud Station has been enabled by your DSM administrator (at Control Panel > Privileges > Cloud Station Server).
If you have read-only permission for a remote shared folder, you can only configure a download-only task, meaning that any changes you make in the local folder will not be synced to Cloud Station Server. Only accounts with read/write privileges to the remote folder may configure bidirectional sync. That is to say, you can only set the sync direction to download-only if the login account does not have write permission to the remote folder.
You can set the maximum file size as a number between 0~10240000 MB, with 0 meaning unlimited.
Enable advanced consistency check ensures ultimate accuracy of synchronization, where Cloud Station Drive compares additional criteria such as hash, execution bit and file permissions in different scenarios where merging is required. This takes more time and resources in completing synchronization tasks.
For Windows environment, you can create up to 64 sync tasks with Cloud Station Drive. Please refer to below instruction regarding adding new tasks and connections.
When migrating your system configurations to another computer via cloning, please ensure that you have logged out of your previous Cloud Station Drive account. The new connection will conflict with your previous one and lead to both connection and syncing failure.

To add a new Sync task:

Click Create.
Select which NAS you want to create a new task on and click Next.
Choose the local folder and remote shared folder you want to sync, and apply Advanced settings where needed.
Click Next to complete the setup.

Note:

Folders already synced or folders that are ancestor or child folders to a synced folder cannot be selected.
The following file types and drive types are not supported in Cloud Station Drive:
- Windows disk drives
- Windows shortcuts
- Mac alias
- Windows symbolic links
- Hidden files
- Windows folders with these attributes:
  - OFFLINE
  - REPARSE_POINT
  - SYSTEM
  - TEMPORARY

To add a new connection with another Synology product:

Click Create.
Choose Another Synology product, then enter your login information. Click Next.
Choose the local folder and remote shared folder you want to sync. If you want to modify sync settings, click Sync rules.
Click Next to complete the setup.

To unlink a connection:

Select the connection you want to modify and click the drop-down menu to the right of the server name.
Click Unlink.

Manage your Sync tasks

You can manage your sync tasks with the buttons located at the top of the main page.

To manage your sync tasks:

Click to highlight the sync task you want to manage
Click Pause, Resume, or Delete to pause, resume, or delete the task.
Inside your sync folder, you can also right click on any subfolder to stop or resume sync.

Note:

After deleting a task, a full re-sync might be required if you wish to link again. When you set up a new connection, Cloud Station Drive will automatically compare existing files and only upload/download the changes that have been made.

To change your sync rules:

Select the sync task you want to manage and click Sync rules.
You can reset selective sync rules of the chosen task in the Folder and Files tabs.
You can reset the sync direction of the chosen task and modify advanced consistency check settings in the Sync mode tab.

Note:

You can only set sync direction to download only if the login account does not have write permission to the remote folder.

Sync and Manage Your Files

After Cloud Station Drive is set up on all your computers, you can start file syncing with Synology product and your other computers.

To access your files, do any of the following:

Click the link below your sync tasks to open the Cloud Station Drive folder on your computer and then select the files or folders you want to access.
In the Cloud Station Drive tray menu, you can click the folder icon on the top right hand corner to access the Cloud Station Drive folder.
Log in to DSM with your DSM user credentials, go to File Station, and then browse to home > CloudStation > Drive (or home > CloudStation for users upgrading from a previous Cloud Station version) to access your private files. If you are syncing files in a shared folder, the files can be directly accessed from the same shared folder in File Station.

To sync your files, do either of the following:

Put your files into the Cloud Station folder on your computer to start file syncing. When file syncing is in progress, a blue symbol will appear on the application icon in the system tray of your computer, which will be replaced with a green one once the syncing process is complete. If you pause syncing, a grey symbol will appear.
Right click on any file on your PC to copy it to your Cloud Station Drive sync folder.
If you want to pause or resume the syncing process, click on application icon in the system tray of your computer, and then choose Pause or Resume.

Icon overlays

Icon overlays appear on the bottom left corner of the files or folders in your Cloud Station folder, indicating its status. You can uncheck Show icon overlay for file status in Global settings if you do not wish to see them.

Icon	Description
	This icon indicates that your file or folder has been successfully synced and is up to date, or it is yet to be processed.
	This icon indicates your file or folder has been filtered out and has not been synced. Possible reasons include: a system default filter, sync rules filter, server profile settings, or ACL permissions. You can uncheck Show icons for unsynced files in Global settings if you do not wish to see this icon.
	This icon indicates that sync is currently in process.
	This icon indicates that you have read only permission to the synced file or folder.

Note:

By default, Cloud Station Drive will not back up files and folders under the following circumstances:
- The file type is any of the following:
  tmp temp swp lnk
- The file name starts with any of the following:
  ~
- The file name is or contains any of the following:
  - @eadir
  - .SynologyWorkingDirectory
  - #recycle
  - desktop.ini
  - .DS_STORE
  - Icon\r
  - thumbs.db
  - $Recycle.Bin
  - @sharebin
  - System Volume Information
  - Program Files
  - Program Files (x86)
  - ProgramData
  - #snapshot
- For Windows:
  - The folder or file path contains the following characters:
    * : ? \ / " < > |
  - The folder or file path is longer than 247 characters.
  - The file name is longer than 255 characters.
  - File type is a shortcut or symbolic link.
  - Files or folders with these attributes:
    - OFFLINE
    - REPARSE_POINT
    - SYSTEM
    - TEMPORARY
- For Mac:
  - The folder or file path contains the following characters:
    \ /
  - The folder or file path is longer than 768 characters.
  - The file name is longer than 255 characters.
  - The file type is any of the following:
    - Icon
    - Socket
    - Device node
    - FIFO
- For Linux:
  - The folder or file path contains the following characters:
    \ /
  - The folder or file path is longer than 2048 characters.
  - The file name is longer than 255 characters.
  - The file type is any of the following:
    - Socket
    - Device node
    - FIFO
When setting file names you don't want to sync, please note that on Windows a capitalized and lower case file names are considered to be the same file (ex. A.txt and a.txt), but on Linux and Mac systems they can be used as different file names.
.pst files are not supported because .pst files are not guaranteed to be portable.
Network drives and removable devices (such as USB drives or SD cards) are supported on Cloud Station Drive. It is suggested only to use network drives and removable devices as local sync directory for download-only tasks because change detection on these drives/devices might not be available.
On macOS, we suggest to use APFS file system for external drives in order to prevent errors caused by files with “._” in their filenames.
If local folder contains a mount point, files inside the mount point might not be synced because Cloud Station Drive can not detect file changes inside a mount point.

To download previous versions of a synced file:

Right-click the file and choose Synology Cloud Station Drive > Browse previous versions.
Find the version you want to download and click on the download icon.
Enter the file name and choose the destination to save the file.

To download a deleted file:

Log in to DSM with your DSM user credentials, go to Cloud Station Server, and click Version History on the left panel.
Select the file you want to download, and then choose Download from the Action drop-down menu.

To manage your download tasks:

Double click on the Cloud Station Drive icon in the system tray of your computer, and then click Launch app.
Go to the Download History tab to cancel your downloading tasks or delete the records.

To view sync logs:

Double click on the Cloud Station Drive icon in the system tray of your computer, and then click Launch app.
Go to the Sync logs tab to view your sync logs.

To create a file sharing link:

Right-click the file you want to share, and then choose Synology Cloud Station Drive > Create a file sharing link.
The following options can also be modified:
- Enable password protection: Select this option and specify a password so that only users with the password can access the created link.
- Validity period: You can customize valid access periods and access times for shared links.
  - Customize validity period: You can determine how long a shared link will remain active after creation. The link will become invalid once the specified period passes.
  - Customize valid access times: You can determine how many times a shared link can be accessed. The link will become invalid once the specified number of times is reached.
Click Apply and copy to complete your settings. The link will be copied to your clipboard.

Global settings

You can change your proxy settings and manage Cloud Station sharing feature on the Global settings page.

To configure proxy settings, do the following:

Double click on the Cloud Station Drive icon in the system tray of your computer, or click the icon and select Main app.
Go to Global settings.
Click Proxy on the top to enter the page for proxy settings.
Tick Auto-detect to use proxy settings provided by the OS. Or, tick Manual to specify your own proxy server IP and port.
Tick Enable proxy authentication and enter username and password for proxy authorization.
Click Apply to save all the settings.

Note:

If proxy is enabled, Cloud Station Drive will always connect to Synology product through proxy.

To edit your sync settings:

Double click the Cloud Station Drive icon or select Main app in the menu.
Click Global Settings > Advanced.
Select a default action for when re-linking occurs.
Select a file version conflict resolution.
- Keep the latest modified version: When a file conflict takes place between the server and the client, the latest file (the one with the latest modified time) will be retained. If the latest file is the local file on the client, the file on the server will become a historic version. If the latest file is on the server, the local file will be discarded, and you can tick the option to Rename and keep the discarded version.
- Keep the version on the server: When a file conflict takes place between the server and the client, the file on the server will always be retained and the local version will be discarded. You can tick the option to Rename and keep the discarded version.
Click Apply to save your settings.

Note:

If more than one computer makes changes to the same file, conflicts may occur. To solve this problem, you can set a conflict solution.
Conflicting files to be kept will be renamed "[file name]_[computer name]_[modified date]_Conflict.[file extension]" (for example, "a.txt" might be renamed as "a_ComputerName_20121001_Conflict.txt").

Enable SSL Encrypted Connection

A certificate can be used to secure data transfer between your Synology product and computers, and having a certificate allows users to validate the identity of the host server before sending any confidential information. You can import a certificate issued by a trusted authority (at Control Panel > Security > Certificate) on your DSM, enable secure connection on Cloud Station on your client computer, and then the system will verify the given certificate to ensure your Cloud Station connection is protected.

To enable SSL data transmission encryption:

For new connections:
1. Click Create.
2. Select Another Synology product and enter your user credentials.
3. Tick the Enable SSL data transmission encryption checkbox.
For existing connections:
1. Select the connection you want to modify and click the drop-down menu to the right of the server name.
2. Click Edit connection, enter your user credentials and tick the Enable SSL data transmission encryption checkbox.

Note:

If Cloud Station Drive fails to verify the SSL certificate, it may mean that it is an untrusted self-signed certificate, or someone may be trying to intercept your connection. Please go to Control Panel > Security > Certificate for more information.

Remove Cloud Station Drive

To remove Cloud Station Drive on Mac:

Go to Finder > Application and right click the Cloud Station Drive application, then select Package Contents.
Go to Contents > SharedSupport.
Copy and paste Remove Synology Cloud Station Drive onto your desktop.
Double click Remove Synology Cloud Station Drive to uninstall Cloud Station Drive from your Mac computer.

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