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

Why Mounting Wasabi on Windows Is a Smart Move

Wasabi is built for affordable bulk storage — but it's an object store, not a drive you can browse. Mounting fixes that: OurClone exposes your Wasabi bucket as a drive through WinFsp, so you can open, edit, and drop files into Wasabi straight from File Explorer, with files streamed on demand instead of downloaded in bulk.

• 🧩 Native File Explorer Integration — Your Wasabi bucket shows up as a regular drive in "This PC", so every Windows app can read and write files directly.
• 💸 No Egress or API Fees — Wasabi charges a flat per-TB storage rate with no egress or request fees, so re-reading files from a mounted bucket won't add surprise charges.
• 💾 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 Wasabi 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 Wasabi 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 Wasabi in the background.

OurClone makes both the polling interval (how often it checks Wasabi 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 Wasabi
• 🛡️ Read-only mode prevents accidental writes when you only need to browse

What to Know Before You Mount Wasabi

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 Access Keys and Note Your Region — In the Wasabi console, create an Access Key and Secret Key, and note your storage region so OurClone uses the matching endpoint (e.g. s3.us-east-1.wasabisys.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\Wasabi. 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.
• 🗓️ Mind the Minimum Storage Window — Wasabi applies a minimum storage-duration policy, so avoid using a mounted bucket as scratch space for files you'll delete within days.

How to Mount Wasabi on Windows with OurClone

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

• 🔐 Connect to Wasabi via Access Keys — Open OurClone and go to Add Storage. Choose Wasabi from the S3 provider list, then fill in a Remote Name, your Access Key and Secret Key (created in the Wasabi console), and your region's endpoint. Once verified, Wasabi will appear as a connected storage backend.



• 📂 Open the Mount Tab and Click New Mount — Once Wasabi 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 Wasabi 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\Wasabi). 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 Wasabi 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 Wasabi in the background.



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

The combination of Wasabi access keys, WinFsp, and OurClone's mount engine gives you a bucket that genuinely feels like a local drive on Windows — flat-rate storage you can browse like any folder.

Getting the Most Out of Your Wasabi Mount