Is it possible to run Rclone in Windows 10 WSL, and mount Google Drive in Windows?

Help and Support
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I've searched these forums, and I've found HOWTOs for parts of what I want to do, but I'm not certain how to connect the pieces or if it's at all possible. I've never used Rclone, so I figured it was best to inquire before proceeding. I'm running Windows 10 v21H1 w/ Ubuntu v20.04.3 LTS running in WSL. I'd like to install Rclone in Ubuntu, then mount my Google Drive as a network drive in Windows.

I've looked at documentation for installing Rclone in Linux and Windows, how to configure it for use w/ Google Drive, and how to mount Google Drive as a network drive in Windows. I suppose that I could make this simple, and install Rclone in Windows, and be done w/ it, but I'd really like to run this on Ubuntu in WSL, if there's a way to do this. If so, I'd really appreciate someone pointing me in the proper direction of documentation for how to accomplish this. Thank you.

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2

hello and welcome to the forum,

yes, easy to do, no need to use a network drive, net share, net use

  1. on wsl vm, run rclone mount, same as any linux distro
    for example, rclone mount gdrive: /home/username/rclone/mountpoints/gdrive
  2. on windows host, dir \\wsl$\distroname\home\username\rclone\mountpoints\gdrive
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Thank you for your response and the directions. This is much simpler that I'd imagined. Just one question, however: Would this be considered a recommended installation method, or would I be better off installing it directly in Windows?

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every use case if different.

tho in my testing, wsl cannot see a rclone mount on windows.
would need to netshare the local mountpoint and on wsl, use smbclient, mount or some other method.

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Looks like smb it is! Thanks very much for your assistance w/ this. I'm going to try setting this up next week, so we'll see how things turn out. I really appreciate your input on everything. :smile:

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make sure to let's us know how things turn out.

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Will do! I'm going to follow a tutorial I found on this site for setting this up, and add in your commands to connect the two pieces. Hopefully, things will go smoothly. Thank you again for having taken the time to go through this w/ me. It really helped me understand how everything fit together.

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good to hear,

can you post the link to that tutorial?

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Sure thing! Originally, I was going to use this tutorial for mounting Google Drive from Linux. However, when you informed me that I could do so in Windows, I decided to switch over to the basic install on this site, along w/ the configuration for Google Drive. I also found this video tutorial that looked promising for mounting Google Drive as a Windows drive using Rclone if my first preference to run it through WSL had not been an option.

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