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Mount S3 Bucket As Local Drive

7 min read.Oct 27, 2025

Arun Shaw

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Effortlessly connect your Amazon S3 bucket as a local drive on Windows or Linux, allowing you to access, manage, and sync your cloud files seamlessly.

Prerequisites

• A valid domain name

• A server having atleast 1VCPU and Ubuntu with Port 80 and 443 opened

• A S3 bucket with Access Key Id and Secret Key Id

The goal is to mount an Amazon S3 bucket as a secure, always-accessible network drive that can be used from Windows File Explorer and Android devices, using a Linux VM as the gateway.

Components and flow

1. Windows/ Linux/Android or any Client

   • Access the storage using HTTPS.

   • Can upload/download files directly through the file explorer.

2. Caddy Server (on Linux VM)

   • Listens on ports 80 and 443.

   • Handles TLS/SSL certificates using Let’s Encrypt.

   • Uses Basic Authentication (bcrypt hash).

   • Acts as a reverse proxy to the rclone WebDAV service (localhost:8080).

3. rclone WebDAV Server

   • Runs on the same Linux VM at localhost:8080.

   • Configured with --vfs-cache-mode writes and --rc enabled.

   • Connects to an AWS S3 bucket as the backend storage.

   • Provides read/write access to S3 via the WebDAV protocol.

4. AWS S3 Bucket

   • Private bucket storing all files.

   • Has event notifications configured for s3:ObjectCreated:* and s3:ObjectRemoved:*

5. AWS Lambda Function

   • Triggered by S3 events.

   • Uses the ssh2 Node.js library to securely connect (via SSH key) to the Linux VM.

   • Runs rclone rc vfs/refresh --remote s3-nas:ez-nas to refresh cache after direct S3 uploads.

Implementation

Before proceeding i'm expecting that you have all prerequisites

Configure rclone with S3 bucket

connect with the vm with ssh and follow

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

sudo apt install -y rclone caddy unzip

rclone config

it will ask few questions answer them like this

n) New remote
name> s3remote
Storage> s3
provider> AWS
env_auth> false
access_key_id> <YOUR_AWS_ACCESS_KEY>
secret_access_key> <YOUR_AWS_SECRET_KEY>
region> ap-south-1     # or whichever your bucket is in
endpoint> (leave blank)
location_constraint> (same as region)
acl> private
Edit advanced config?> n

Now upload few files in s3 bucket from aws console, the execute the below command to verify. If you do everything correctly it should list the files stored in the bucket.

rclone ls <REMOTE_NAME>:<BUCKET_NAME>

Setting up rclone webdav server

Lets a create a systemd service so our service keeps running in the background and restart across reboots.

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/rclone-webdav.service

paste the following content there and replace REMOTE_NAME and BUCKET_NAME with your's one and type ctrl+O the ctrl+X

[Unit]
Description=Rclone WebDAV Server
After=network.target

[Service]
User=ubuntu
ExecStart=/usr/bin/rclone serve webdav <REMOTE_NAME>:<BUCKET_NAME> --addr localhost:8080 --vfs-cache-mode writes
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Start the service with the below commnads

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now rclone-webdav

The webdav server should be running in localhost:8080

Configure caddy

We have to setup caddy to make this server accessible via our domain along with https.

Create a hashed password

caddy hash-password --plaintext <Any_password>

sudo nano /etc/caddy/Caddyfile

test.arunshaw.in { #use your domain here
    reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:8080
    basicauth /* {
      #username   hashed_password
       test $2a$14$8.P3PhwobmZxdfyWDy6LJOgG88i1MdFOYYeW
    }
}

After configure just ctrl+o then ctrl+x to save to file, now to verifiy the configuration, type the following commnad

sudo caddy validate --config /etc/caddy/Caddyfile

Now we have to make a dns record to our domain provider

• Type : A

• Value : Your server public ipv4 address

• subdomain : if any (in my case it is "test")

Now run

sudo systemctl enable --now caddy

If everything went correctly, the server should serve files at https://test.arunshaw.in

Mount as local drive in windows

First open This PC, right click on blank space and select add a network location, and there it will ask few things

• Network address : enter full domain with https (e.g https://test.arunshaw.in)

• Username : Same as we configured in the CaddyFile

• Password : Enter the plaintext password (not the hashed one)

Now you will see the s3 bucket files should be shown in new driver under newtwork location.

Found something unclear or facing any setup issues? Drop me an email at arunshaw433@gmail.com, and I’ll do my best to assist you.