We had a problem moving from Google Drive to Bucket storage (S3, Google Storage, etc.) in that we still wanted to be able to mount the bucket as a network drive. We were able to find a stable, free, open source, multiplatform way to do this. The instructions for Windows are below:
RClone was the solution - specifically, it can mount an S3 bucket as a network drive for free.
Download and unzip rclone: https://rclone.org/downloads/Put this folder onto your desktop and name the folder "rclone"Open cmd and run rclone config - fill it out. Instructions: https://rclone.org/s3/[my_credentials_for_s3] type = s3 provider = AWS env_auth = false region = us-east-1 acl = bucket-owner-full-control access_key_id = XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX secret_access_key = YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
The output should look like this (with proper keys) and will be in C:/Users/myname/.config/rclone/rclone.conf
3. Install WINFSP (Windows File System Proxy) http://www.secfs.net/winfsp/rel/
4. Create a bat file to mount the drive
a. Create a file in the "rclone" folder that has the rclone.exe executable and name it "mount_s3.bat"
b. Edit mount_s3.bat an add:
call rclone mount my_credentials_for_s3:path/to/my/data/on/S3 S:
c. Double-click the mount_s3bat file to mount the drive. This window will need to stay open to keep the drive mounted. This could possibly be put into a Windows service and made automatic.
Now you can access the data on the S network drive by just clicking one file!