Does Box Drive store files both in the cloud and on local Windows machine?

Hi Guy, 

Welcome to the Box Community, I'm happy to help!

Although Box Drive stores your files in form of cache data, you can still work offline using Box Drive's "Mark for Offline" feature.

Yes, you can also mark content in Box Drive to make it available offline. Drive downloads this content to your device's hard drive so you can work when you're not connected to the Internet. When you get back online, Drive automatically uploads the revised content, so you are always working with the most up-to-date versions of your files.

More information about making content available offline can be found in this article: https://support.box.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043697574-Making-Content-Available-Offline 

Let me know if you have other questions and I will do my best to help!

Regards,

Thank you. I assume this is on a PC by PC basis? ie if I mark folder A to be available offline, that only applies to the machine where I do it and not to other machines that may also be running Box Drive? That appears to be the case but just checking.

Further to this, I need to reformat a Mac HD running OS 10.12.6 for an upgrade, which I think is currently running Box drive (under get info > more info the app says keywords: Box, Drive so assume Box Drive and not Box sync?? Hard to say really). I need to check it won't then just wipe out all the files in my whole box account so they can't be accessed further by other machines/online/this machine when it's upgraded. Does this in any way depend on whether any are marked to be available offline (on that particular machine or elsewhere?).

Or is there just a way to pause syncing to that particular machine while upgrades take place? What's the best approach? Thanks.

Can you set Box Drive to NOT make a local copy of a file or directory? And can this setting be put into place company wide as an Admin? I cannot find that option. We do NOT want local copies Box files/folders.

We need this as well. I was told you can possibly turn off the option to make available offline but I'm not getting clear answers on if that is the only way to avoid local files being saved to our laptops.