Cloudberry Explorer for Google Storage Review

Cloud is the word. Most of us are using it knowingly or unknowingly. Maybe some of you already have a desktop SkyDrive sync software or a Google Drive software. The problem with these sync software is that they choose the time to upload the documents and files. With Cloudberry, things change. You just have to drag and drop a file from one window to another to upload the files. This review of Cloudberry Explorer for Google Storage checks out how efficient that software is.

Cloudberry download & installation

The download part was a bit tedious. That’s because my Avast antivirus kept giving a message that the software I was downloading was a malware. It wouldn’t let me download the file. But since Cloudberry comes from a reputed brand, I assumed it was a false positive turned off my antivirus for a while. That done, download and the installation on my Windows PC was easier than expected. I did run an antimalware test on downloaded file and no threats were detected. I wrote about the antivirus warning to its customer care about this malware warning, and will update the post if I receive ant response from them.

There were also no crapware that generally accompanies freeware. Cloudberry comes in two versions – freeware and paid. We are reviewing the free version of Cloudberry.

Cloudberry Explorer for Google Cloud

Once installed, you can see the main window divided into two Explorer type windows. By default both will be your local storage. You will have to change the source of one of the Windows to Google cloud such as Google Drive or Google Nearline before you can upload or download files from the cloud.

But before you can select the source Google cloud, you have to add it to the Cloudberry. This, you can do from File menu > Google Cloud Storage. Since the version is specific to Google cloud, you can only add Google cloud offerings. There is a separate tab for Google Drive.

When you opt to add a Google cloud service to Cloudberry, you will have to sign up with your Google login credentials. For example, clicking on New Account will open up a login dialog where you enter your login credentials for the Drive you wish to add to Cloudberry. You can add more than one accounts to the system. For details about Google cloud, you can visit cloud.google.com.

That done, working with Cloudberry is a cheese. You can change the source of one of the windows to Google cloud – it could be Google Drive, Google Nearline, or any other type of Google cloud offering. All you need to do is to transfer files just like you move or copy files from one Windows File Explorer window to another Windows Explorer window. You can drag a file from local file to the Explorer window showing Google Drive to upload the file to Google Drive. To download a file, select a file from the Google cloud window and drag it to the destination folder in the local storage window in the Cloudberry Explorer.

The speed of transfer is good. It hardly took four minutes to upload approximately 600MB of data from local computer to Drive on a 16 Mbps connection. Thus, Cloudberry offers a better speed than the manual upload to Drive.

If you can remember, Google Drive can be accessed via web, and you have an upload option present. You use that option to upload files and folders. The speed of upload is slow in this case as compared to Cloudberry explorer. Plus, I did not have to open a web browser and log into my Google Drive.

Additional Features of Cloudberry

Other than easy and faster transfer of files, you can search for files with the free version of Cloudberry. You can delete the files using right click in the window showing contents of Google Cloud. There is an encryption facility available only to Pro users. The free version will not provide encryption to uploaded files and it is not clear if there is any encryption during transfer of files.

Summary

Cloudberry Explorer for Google Cloud is meant for mass transfer of data. That is, though you can transfer smaller files, it works better for bigger folders containing tons of data. The technique is HTTP but speed is good compared to manual searching and downloading or uploading data. Uploading of data is faster than you get using manual upload features of Google Drive. I would recommend it if you deal with good amount of data – if you transfer (upload and download) plenty of files every day. If you are using other Google services, such as the Nearline or Google Cloud, Cloudberry is a must have tool because – as I said – it works much better when working with volumes of data compared to manual upload/download using browser.

You can download Cloudberry Explorer for Google Cloud from its home page.