What is the difference between the two Directory Structure options for S3 and Google Cloud Storage

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What is the difference between the two Directory Structure options (Simple ‘/’ Delimited and Enhanced FS) for S3 and Google Cloud Storage?

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Enhanced odrive FS:
If you don’t have an existing storage bucket to link to yet, we recommend using the Enhanced odrive FS directory structure option to connect to your bucket (anyone else connecting to this S3 bucket in the future should use the same option).

You will notice improved support and performance, particularly on file move and rename operations. Always use odrive to access your Enhanced odrive FS bucket–your files will still technically be accessible using non-odrive applications, but the file and folder names will be encoded in such a way that it will be more difficult to browse around.

Simple ‘/’ Delimited:
Information is stored into the storage bucket in the same way that Amazon S3 normally stores its information.

By using a ‘/’ character in the file’s key, a directory structure can be simulated. That way, when you browse the bucket using the Amazon Web Services console or with a third-party app such as the S3 Browser, you see a file folder structure.

In this mode optimized moves on files are supported, but folder and cloud file moves are not supported.

Please note
Switching the directory structure option on an existing storage link will not convert existing data to the new directory structure.

To convert existing data from one type to another you will need to create a separate link to the bucket under the new configuration and migrate the data by downloading from the old configuration and uploading to the new one.

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So, the only advantage I can see to / is that I can use the storage provider’s web client to access the file system. Is that actually the case? Does odrive have any plans to provide a web client for access?

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Hi @allen,
The advantage to simple '/' Delimited is compatibility with other clients. This can be the service’s native web client, or other 3rd party clients that can connect to S3-like storage. The Enhanced odrive FS directory structure is specific to odrive, so you need to use odrive clients to easily access it.

When you login to https://www.odrive.com you can access our web client, which provides the ability to browse, upload, and download S3 and S3-compatible storage in both odrive enhanced FS and simple '\' delimited directory structures.