How to Mount Cloudflare R2 on Windows: Treat Your Bucket Like a Local Drive

Why Mounting Cloudflare R2 on Windows Is a Smart Move

Cloudflare R2 is cheap, S3-compatible storage with no egress fees — but it's built for apps and CDNs, not for browsing. Mounting fixes that: OurClone exposes your R2 bucket as a drive through WinFsp, so you can open, edit, and drop files into R2 straight from File Explorer, with files streamed on demand instead of downloaded in bulk.

• 🧩 Native File Explorer Integration — Your R2 bucket shows up as a regular drive in "This PC", so every Windows app can read and write files directly.
• 💸 Zero Egress Fees — Cloudflare R2 charges for storage but not for egress, so streaming and re-reading files from a mounted bucket won't rack up data-transfer bills.
• 💾 No Bulk Downloads — Mounting streams files on demand, so even a multi-terabyte bucket only spends local disk on the files you actually open.
• 🛡️ Read-Only Mode for Safety — Mount read-only when you only need to browse or pull, and Windows will block any accidental write or delete.
• 🔌 S3-Compatible Under the Hood — OurClone connects to R2 through its S3-compatible endpoint, so setup is the same access-key flow you'd use for any S3 store.

How Mounting a Cloud Drive Works (and Why It's Different from Sync)

Syncing a bucket means copying every file down to your disk and keeping both sides in lockstep — fine for small buckets, painful for big ones.

Mounting takes the opposite approach. OurClone presents your R2 bucket as a virtual filesystem through WinFsp — the folder structure is visible immediately, but file contents are only fetched when you actually open something. Recently used files are cached locally so the second open is instant, and writes are uploaded back to R2 in the background.

OurClone makes both the polling interval (how often it checks R2 for changes) and the maximum cache size configurable, plus a read-only switch for extra protection against accidental writes.

• 🚀 Stream files on demand — no need to download the whole bucket
• 💾 Saves PC disk space by caching only what you actually open
• 🔁 Two-way access — edits in the mounted drive upload back to R2
• 🛡️ Read-only mode prevents accidental writes when you only need to browse

What to Know Before You Mount Cloudflare R2

A few minutes of planning before you click Mount will save you from cleaning up a messy mount point later.

• 🧩 Install WinFsp First — Mounting on Windows relies on WinFsp (Windows File System Proxy), a free, open-source driver that lets OurClone expose your bucket as a real Windows volume. Install it once before your first mount — without it, the mount won't start.
• 🔑 Create an R2 API Token — In the Cloudflare dashboard, create an R2 API token to get an Access Key ID and Secret Access Key. You'll also need your account-specific endpoint (https://<account-id>.r2.cloudflarestorage.com).
• 📁 Pick the Right Mount Source — Mount a specific bucket, or a prefix inside it (like my-bucket/photos), for focused access. A narrower source is faster to list.
• 🖥️ Choose a Sensible Local Mount Point — Point the mount at a dedicated, empty folder like C:\CloudMounts\R2. Don't aim it at your Desktop or any folder that already has files.
• 🔒 Read-Only vs Read-Write — Read-only is the safer pick for archives; pick read-write to upload, edit, or delete. Read-only mode literally cannot upload — Save dialogs will fail.
• ⏱️ Set a Reasonable Polling Interval — Lower intervals catch changes faster; higher intervals are quieter. For most workflows 30–60 seconds is a happy middle.

How to Mount Cloudflare R2 on Windows with OurClone

Once WinFsp is installed, OurClone makes mounting R2 on Windows straightforward. Step 1 connects your bucket with an R2 API token — and from there you're a few clicks away from a File Explorer-ready drive.

• 🔐 Connect to Cloudflare R2 via Access Keys — Open OurClone and go to Add Storage. Choose Cloudflare R2 from the S3 provider list, then fill in a Remote Name, the Access Key ID and Secret Access Key from your Cloudflare R2 API token, and your account endpoint (https://<account-id>.r2.cloudflarestorage.com). Once verified, R2 will appear as a connected storage backend.



• 📂 Open the Mount Tab and Click New Mount — Once R2 is connected, go to the Mount tab in OurClone. Click the New Mount button in the top-right corner to open the mount configuration dialog.



• ⚙️ Configure the Mount Settings — In the dialog, pick Cloudflare R2 as the authorized source. Choose what to mount — a specific bucket or a prefix inside it (e.g., my-bucket/photos). Then pick an empty local folder as the mount point (something like C:\CloudMounts\R2). Choose Read-only if you just want to browse, or Read-write if you need to upload and edit. Optionally tweak the polling interval and max cache size. Click Mount to finish.
• 🗂️ Use Your R2 Mount Like a Local Drive — Open the mount point in File Explorer (it appears under "This PC" as a mounted volume). Windows now treats it as a real drive — browse, open, create folders, drag in files, and delete just like any local folder. Create a new backup folder, drop in a few files, and OurClone uploads them to R2 in the background.



• ✅ Confirm the Sync on Cloudflare R2 — Switch back to OurClone and open your R2 storage from the file browser — your new backup folder and uploaded files should already be listed. For extra peace of mind, open the Cloudflare dashboard and confirm the files appeared in your bucket too.

The combination of an R2 API token, WinFsp, and OurClone's mount engine gives you a bucket that genuinely feels like a local drive on Windows — egress-free storage you can browse like any folder.

Getting the Most Out of Your Cloudflare R2 Mount