Amazon S3

Mount an Amazon S3 bucket as a Windows drive. Both general purpose buckets and directory buckets (S3 Express One Zone) are supported.

Before you begin

You need an Access Key ID and Secret Access Key.

Where to get the keys — in the IAM console:

1. Open Users and select your IAM user (create one if you only have the root account — AWS advises against using root access keys).
2. Open the Security credentials tab.
3. Under Access keys, click Create access key.
4. Copy both values right away — the secret is shown only once, at creation time.

The IAM identity needs at least s3:ListAllMyBuckets, s3:GetBucketLocation, s3:ListBucket, and s3:GetObject / s3:PutObject / s3:DeleteObject on the target bucket:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    { "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": ["s3:ListAllMyBuckets", "s3:GetBucketLocation"],
      "Resource": "*" },
    { "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": ["s3:ListBucket"],
      "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::YOUR-BUCKET" },
    { "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": ["s3:GetObject", "s3:PutObject", "s3:DeleteObject"],
      "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::YOUR-BUCKET/*" }
  ]
}

Help from AWS

• Manage access keys for IAM users
• Secure access keys (best practices)
• Amazon S3 User Guide
• S3 console

Connect

1. Click Add in the toolbar.
2. Choose Enterprise → Amazon S3.
3. Pick the bucket type: General purpose or Directory (S3 Express One Zone).
4. Enter the Access Key ID and Secret Access Key, then click the Refresh button next to the bucket field.
5. Select the bucket to mount and click Connect.

Manual bucket entry

If listing buckets is not permitted for your IAM identity, tick the checkbox to the left of the bucket field and type the bucket name directly.

Settings

Setting	Description	Default
Type	General purpose or Directory (S3 Express One Zone)	General purpose
Access Key ID / Secret Access Key	IAM credentials	—
Bucket	The bucket to mount (list or manual entry)	—
Read-only	Blocks writes to the mounted drive	off

Behavior & limits

• Bucket regions are detected automatically; the drive talks to s3.<region>.amazonaws.com (directory buckets: s3express-control.<region>.amazonaws.com).
• RaiDrive offers directory buckets in us-east-1, us-east-2, us-west-2, ap-south-1, ap-northeast-1, eu-west-1, and eu-north-1. AWS's current region list for S3 Express One Zone is in AWS: endpoints for directory buckets.
• S3 has no real folders — "folders" are key prefixes, so a folder rename on the drive is a copy-and-delete of every object under the prefix, which is slow for large trees — see AWS: organizing objects using folders.
• Storage classes with retrieval delay (Glacier and Glacier Deep Archive) cannot be opened until restored — see AWS: restoring archived objects.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause	Fix
Bucket list stays empty	IAM identity lacks s3:ListAllMyBuckets	Use manual bucket entry, or extend the IAM policy
Access Denied on connect	Key pair lacks permission on the bucket	Check the bucket policy and the IAM policy
Very slow folder rename	Prefix copy-and-delete semantics of S3	Avoid renaming large folder trees on the drive