How To Map A Network Drive to OneDrive for Business (or What To Do If You Don't Have Enough Free Space to Sync Your OneDrive for Business Data)

My organization is currently in the early stages of looking a migration to Office 365.  I welcome the possibility of getting out of the business of managing users' home folders by giving them 1TB of cloud space on OneDrive for Business and letting them use it as they see fit.

We are currently in the process of deploying SSD drives to some of our computers to help with performance issues.  As a cost savings measure, I know we are often deploying 120GB drives.  As we test and evaluate, several colleagues asked me what would happen if we had more data than we had hard drive space.  I would assume that a 120GB drive might have 80GB free after the installation of operating system and software. It's very possible that some of my users have more data than that.

I opened a support ticket with Microsoft and got a great option.  They confirmed that the OneDrive sync client might crash or slow the system down if it was trying to sync more data than space allowed.  There are options to not sync down the entire OneDrive contents, but I worried that might be cumbersome for users.  

The alternative is to skip the OneDrive sync client and map a network drive to the OneDrive for Business space.  This means you need Internet access to access your data, and there could be bandwith implications, but this sounds like a great option.

The steps to do this are as follows (as demonstrated on Windows 10):

• Open Internet Explorer
• Go to https://portal.microsoft.com. Keep me Signed In option box checked and Sign In 
• Depending on your version of Internet Explorer, take one of the following actions: 
• Click the Tools menu, and then click Internet options. 
• Click the gear icon, and then click Internet options.
• Click the Security tab, click Trusted sites, and then click Sites
• In the Add this website to the zone box https://*.sharepoint.com >add> ok 
• Click on Custom level> Scroll all the way down to select Automatic logon with Current username and Password.
• Browsed to   gear icon on IE >compatibility view settings > sharepoint.com> ok
• Start > Run > type Services.msc > Search Web Client >Change Startup to Automatic > Ok
• Browsed to the OneDrive Location which you want to map  > Click on return to Classic OneDrive >click on Gear icon >Ribbon On >click on Library >Open with Explorer>>and copy the  path 
• Open File Explorer>right click on This PC or My Computer> Map Network Drive> Select the drive and paste the URL> ok