Big media files on a NAS, opened like a local disk
Pier is a Windows app that mounts WebDAV storage (Nextcloud, ownCloud, Synology, QNAP), SFTP servers and NFS shares as a real drive with its own letter, so editors, Explorer and Office see an ordinary local disk.
- Block cache: files are read block by block into a local cache, so only the parts you open travel over the network. Scrubbing through a large video twice does not download it twice.
- Resume: interrupted uploads and downloads continue from the last block.
- Reconnect and offline mode: after a Wi-Fi drop or VPN reconnect the drive comes back by itself and writes pending changes; offline you keep working from the cache.
- Windows service: drives are available to all users and survive a reboot.
- Pier Backup: encrypted, versioned backups are included.
The built-in Windows WebDAV client only allows Basic authentication over HTTPS by default, limits files to about 50 MB and drops the drive when the connection breaks; Pier was made for exactly that case.
Pricing: free for up to 5 drives with no time limit; Pro (unlimited drives, no ads) is USD 19 per year. Windows 10/11 64-bit, Windows Server 2019+. Not open source.
