Box Drive vs Box Sync

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Box Sync and Box Drive are two separate desktop applications that give users the ability to access Box content from the user's desktop environment. Box Drive will eventually replicate most of Box Sync's functionality, but for now there are a few differences between the applications that may make one more suited to your needs than the other.

Note: There are known issues with having both Box Sync and Box Drive installed on a single machine. We recommend uninstalling Box Sync before installing Box Drive. Click here for Box Sync uninstallation instructions. For information about migrating from Box Sync to Box Drive, click here. 

Box Drive

Box Drive brings your entire Box folder tree to your desktop. All the files you have access to on Box will be accessible from your desktop Box folder. However, Box Drive does not currently support marking files for offline access. This feature will be available in future versions of Box Drive, but until then, if you need to access certain files while disconnected from the internet, we recommend using Box Sync. 

Note: Box Drive does locally cache files that the user has opened. Box Drive's cache size limit is based on your free disk space (50% of available space) and has a maximum limit of 25 GB. Once this limit has been reached, files that have gone un-accessed the longest will be removed first. Also, if a cached file has a new version created on Box, Box Drive will discard the locally cached version.

Box Sync

Box Sync allows you to choose specific files and folders to sync between Box and your desktop. You need to select which files you'd like to sync, and those files will be available from any desktop where you have installed and logged into Box Sync. With Box Sync, your synced files are available for offline access. The files are stored on your local machine, so you will be able to open and edit them without being connected to the internet (your changes will be synced to Box the next time you connect).

See the charts below for more details on the current differences between Box Sync and Box Drive: 

End-User Functionality:

	Box Drive	Box Sync
Search & view all the content in your Box account (including read-only)	✓
Upload content to any Box folder/ Open files from any Box folder	✓
Lock content for editing	✓	✓
Mark content for offline access		✓
Create and retrieve a Shared link	✓	✓
Change the location of the Box folder on your computer		✓

Admin Functionality:

	Box Drive	Box Sync
Device Pinning		✓
Device Trust	✓	✓
Box Verified Enterprise	✓	✓
Auto-updates without user requiring admin rights	✓	✓

Virtual Desktop Support:

Configuration	Box Sync	Box Drive
Published apps	x*	x*
Remote Desktop	x*	x*
VDI (persistent)	✓	✓
VDI (non-persistent)	x	✓

*Both Box Sync and Box Drive only work if you are running on client PC (not on RDS/Terminal Services server) and client drive mapping from RDS/Terminal Services server must be enabled to save content into Box.