Today we’re announcing the release of WorkDocs Drive for users of the Amazon WorkSpaces service. WorkDocs Drive provides a modern way of accessing all of a user’s WorkDocs files, without taking up space on the local drive. Since WorkDocs Drive appears as a mounted drive for Windows, customers can access all of their cloud content using the familiar File Explorer.

Once WorkDocs Drive is installed, it will show up as a mounted drive inside your WorkSpace. The W: drive will contain folders for both your documents and all documents shared with you. These will all be cloud-based files, meaning they have not been downloaded yet and do not take up any local storage space. As you begin to access them, WorkDocs Drive will automatically cache and sync as needed. You can see which files are already downloaded locally or have cloud-only copy via the status badges on the files.

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WorkDocs Drive makes productivity easier by ensuring that you always have access to all your WorkDocs files, regardless of available space on your local disk, and that the files are accessible using familiar desktop applications you use. The WorkDocs Drive scales all the way up to the size of your WorkDocs quota, without any need to ask an administrator to provision any extra disk space for your WorkSpaces.

When changes are made to files on WorkDocs Drive, those changes are automatically saved to Amazon WorkDocs and available through the web interface, mobile applications, and other desktops using the sync client. There are also some special actions you can take on files with the right-click menu: you can copy a link to the file, open the file in the WorkDocs web interface to view feedback, or you can lock/unlock file to prevent accidental overwrites.

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WorkDocs Drive also provides information on your WorkDocs cloud storage quota and current usage. You can perform quick actions at the drive level in File Explorer to report issues, exit WorkDocs Drive, or open local recovered files that might not have synced to WorkDocs cloud.

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Amazon WorkDocs Drive offers additional security benefits. By storing files on WorkDocs, all content is encrypted both in transit and at rest. Additionally, with WorkDocs Drive, administrators are assured that any files being accessed on WorkDocs Drive are entirely managed by WorkDocs. This means that once the file expires from the cache, it is simply no longer present on the machine. There is no risk that local copies of synced files are left or lost on an OS drive.

You can get started with WorkDocs Drive by downloading the installer here.