> A shared drive belongs to a group instead of a person. Everyone on it opens the same tree, uploads into the same folders, and sees the same trash — unlike sharing, where an item… > Source: https://orochibraru.com/penombre/canary/docs/shared-drives · Site index: https://orochibraru.com/llms.txt # Shared drives A **shared drive** belongs to a group instead of a person. Everyone on it opens the same tree, uploads into the same folders, and sees the same trash — unlike [sharing](https://orochibraru.com/penombre/canary/docs/sharing), where an item stays in its owner's drive and other people are given a door to it. Use one for a team's files, a project, or anything that should outlive whoever happened to upload it. Full mode only. [Simple mode](https://orochibraru.com/penombre/canary/docs/simple-mode) already serves one drive to everybody, so a second sharing model on top of it would mean nothing — the page and the sidebar group are hidden there. ## Creating one Any signed-in user can create a drive: **Shared drives → All drives** in the sidebar, then **New shared drive**. The creator owns it, and owning it means managing it. Each drive then appears in the sidebar under its own name, and browses exactly like My Drive: upload, folders, rename, move, preview, notes, documents. The sidebar lists the first five alphabetically and a **N more** link to the rest; the drive you have open is always listed. The management page lives at `/drives/shared`. Search is not limited to the page you are on: from any drive it looks through your own drive, every shared drive you are a member of and every [mounted volume](https://orochibraru.com/penombre/canary/docs/volumes), and each result names where it is. Opening one takes you there: a folder opens, a file opens in its own folder with its preview showing. `GET /api/v1/search?q=` answers the same list to API clients. ## Roles Members are added by name or email, the same search the Share dialog uses, and each is given one role: | Role | Can do | | ------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Manager | Everything below, plus adding members, renaming the drive and creating links | | Editor | Read, upload, edit, move, trash and restore | | Viewer | Read and download only; every write is refused | The owner is a manager who cannot be removed, and is the only person who can delete the drive. Adding someone who is already a member **changes** their role rather than granting a second one, and anyone may remove themselves from a drive they no longer want to see. A public link to something on a drive lists under **My links** of the manager who made it, and stops working once they are no longer a manager of that drive. New members are notified the way a share is; a role change is not news, so it is silent. ## Moving files in and out **Move** and **Copy to…** in a file's or folder's menu (and the selection bar) offer every place you can write to: My Drive, each shared drive where you are not a viewer, and every writable [mounted volume](https://orochibraru.com/penombre/canary/docs/volumes). A folder travels with everything under it; its trashed contents stay behind. A move between two places is a copy followed by deleting the original, and the original is only deleted once every file has arrived — a partial failure leaves both copies rather than losing anything. Moving out of a drive needs write access to it, and nothing can be moved out of a read-only volume (copying out is fine). ## The trash Each drive has its own trash, reached from the **Trash** button on the drive header. Trashing in a shared drive puts the item there, not in the personal trash of whoever pressed delete — so anybody with write access can restore it. ## Where the files live Under `STORAGE_PATH/drives/`, one directory per drive, alongside the per-user directories. Nothing is copied when a drive is created: it starts empty. Rows in `files` and `folders` carry `volume_id = drive:`, the same column [mounted volumes](https://orochibraru.com/penombre/canary/docs/volumes) use, and are owned by the drive's creator. Two consequences worth knowing: - Deleting the creator's account deletes the drive and its files with it. - A drive's bytes count towards the creator's storage usage, not the member's who uploaded them. Activity rows name the person who actually did the thing, not the drive's owner. ## People who only see drives An account can be **drives only**: no drive of its own, only the shared drives it is a member of. It is how you give a client, a band member or a contractor a [simple mode](https://orochibraru.com/penombre/canary/docs/simple-mode)-like view of one drive while you keep every feature. Tick **Shared drives only** when inviting them in **Admin → Users**, or switch an existing account from its row menu, then add them to a drive from **Members**. Such an account signs in straight to its drive (or to **All drives** when it is on several). It has no My Drive, Recent, Starred, trash of its own, shared links, shared-with-me items, categories, mounted volumes or storage page, and it cannot create drives. Its role in each drive is whatever you give it: viewer, editor or manager. The server enforces this, not only the menus: the API, [WebDAV](https://orochibraru.com/penombre/canary/docs/webdav) and the [desktop app](https://orochibraru.com/penombre/canary/docs/desktop) offer it its drives and nothing else. Switching an account to drives only hides its own drive without deleting it; switching it back shows it again. Simple mode ignores the setting, since everyone already shares one drive there. ## Deleting a drive **All drives → ⋯ → Delete drive**, owner only. It deletes the drive's files for everybody and cannot be undone. ## Through the API Drives are managed under `/api/v1/drives`: | Method | Path | What it does | | -------- | ------------------------------------ | ---------------------------- | | `GET` | `/api/v1/drives` | Drives you own or belong to | | `POST` | `/api/v1/drives` | Create one | | `PUT` | `/api/v1/drives/{id}` | Rename it | | `DELETE` | `/api/v1/drives/{id}` | Delete it, owner only | | `GET` | `/api/v1/drives/{id}/members` | Who is on it | | `POST` | `/api/v1/drives/{id}/members` | Add people, or change a role | | `DELETE` | `/api/v1/drives/{id}/members/{user}` | Remove one person | Copying or moving between places is `POST /api/v1/storage/transfer`: the query names where the items are, the body names the `destination` (`drive`, `volume` or neither, plus a `folder`) and a `mode` of `copy` or `move`. Their **contents** are not a separate API. Every `/api/v1/storage/**` endpoint takes an optional `drive` query parameter, and with it acts on that drive instead of your own: ```http GET /api/v1/storage/list?drive= POST /api/v1/storage/folder?drive= ``` Membership is checked before the handler runs: a drive you are not on answers `404` (a guessed id must not reveal that it exists), and a write as a viewer answers `403`.