ODrive for Windows Review

Review of testing ODrive version 5689 in Windows 7 Ultimate. All of my testing was done with the Free version. My 7 day trial for Premium features ran out before I was able to sit down and spend more time with testing ODrive.

Pros: Was fairly easy to install and configure. I like the idea of “Placeholders” as just references to files/folders in the cloud without taking up more space on my local drive. I like the idea of the “zero-knowledge Encryption feature”. But this is only available in the Premium version.

Cons: It was tricky figuring out where files/folders need to go to in order to be Synced to your Cloud Provider. I was initially putting files/folders into C:\users\username\odrive. But then I would get the error message “Not Allowed”. So I read some on the forum and saw that other folks had the same problem. It turns out the path I needed to use is C:\users\username\odrive\Dropbox. In this case Dropbox was my Cloud Provider that I was testing with. I think the tutorial could be more clear on where files/folders need to go in order to be Synced. I did some testing with a large 5gb rar file. ODrive really struggled with uploading this file. It stopped and then restarted the Sync process a couple of times. I set the setting “Split large files” to 2gb. And that seemed to help some. But overall I am still not impressed with the uploading ability of large files (in the GB range). If you are mostly looking to upload maybe up to 500mb size of files, then this software may meet your needs. For me being able to upload large files in the GB range is a big deal. Speedtest.net shows my upload speed at 10mbps and download at 75mbps for reference. This is not a super fast ISP connection (Google Fiber). But it is not “turtle slow” either. I think the trial period is way too short at 7 days. This should be at a minimum of 14 days. Or even 30 days would be nice. It looks like the only support option for ODrive is through posting on their forum. I am not sure I would be happy with just that support option if I was a Premium Customer (paid customer). Emailing support should be another option.

1 Like

Appreciate the feedback Brian!

It sounds like the problem for you was large file upload. This is definitely a sticky area, across the board. Using IFS with a smaller segment size would’ve probably eliminated the repeating upload issue, but there are downsides to using IFS.

We are planning to move to Dropbox’s new API, where we will implement their own upload resume. This will help with this type of large file upload use case.

We are also working on a new, guided flow, for first-time odrive users so that the initial view of the odrive folder is not confusing.

As for the trial, we offer the 7-day trial, but we also give an instant, full refund on the Premium subscription if you cancel within 30 days. This allows people to continue testing and exploring the Premium features beyond the initial 7-day trial period, without risk. Do you think this policy would entice you to keep testing?

Thanks!

1 Like