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What technology do they use? Is it just that my data is literally stored in a folder on their servers and then hosted as a network share (with auth)?

I would think that the files would have to be abstracted somehow, stored in .dat files or distributed across multiple machines for redundancy, and that this would make simply sharing it via windows network share services wouldn't work.

Any ideas?

flacnut
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    DropBox and SkyDrive use actual local folders. No magic behind it, it's just a normal folder on your machine. They just run a background process on your machine to synchronize that folder with their service. They also have nothing to do with `nfs` or `smb`. It's just a local folder with files in it, nothing more. – David Dec 10 '12 at 01:31
  • I'm not talking about their synchronization service, I understand what this is doing. I am able to go to my computer and map a network drive, using `https://d.docs.live.net//` and it maps to my skydrive. This seems to bypass their sync service locally - the files are not local since opening a big document is very slow. The same is achievable for Flickr, Dropbox and other web storage services. I'm trying to understand how they facilitate the network mapping on their end. As I understand windows network mapped drives, they have to use NFS/SMB/CIFS. – flacnut Dec 10 '12 at 01:35
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    Ah, I see. In that case it sounds like they're probably using WebDAV or some similar flavor thereof. Which makes the "abstraction" part of the question make more sense, since there would be a web server translating any backing data store into the service point. (Which is especially important over HTTP since there is no concept of "files" in that protocol.) – David Dec 10 '12 at 01:42
  • WebDAV, that is exactly what I was looking for! If you make that comment an Answer I will flag it. Thankyou for your help! – flacnut Dec 10 '12 at 01:58

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It looks like SkyDrive at least is using WebDAV. The other services are probably doing something very similar. A Google search for "SkyDrive WebDAV" turns up many articles similar to this one. And it looks like Windows Explorer natively supports WebDAV connections for mapping a drive.

David
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