Huawei Drive

At a glance

Capability	Support
rclone support tier	Tier 3: Supported
Checksums	SHA-256
Modification times	Not kept: files show their upload time
Case-insensitive names	No
Duplicate names allowed	No
Server-side copy	Yes
Server-side move and rename	Yes
Folder move and rename	Yes, in one step
Free space reporting	Yes
Empty folders	Yes
Change notifications	Yes
Uploads of unknown size	No
Public links	No

From rclone’s documentation

The rest of this page is adapted from rclone’s documentation for this backend (rclone v1.75.2, MIT licence). It is written for rclone’s command line: where it mentions a flag such as --huaweidrive-example, set the option example in the wizard’s options instead. Commands such as rclone copy aren’t part of CloudMount.

Setup notes

In CloudMount you add this drive from the Add drive screen, and the wizard asks for the options listed under Options. The notes below come from rclone’s setup guide.

Getting your own Client ID and Secret

When you use rclone with Huawei Drive in its default configuration you are using rclone’s client_id. This is shared between all the rclone users. There is a global rate limit on the number of queries per second that each client_id can do set by Huawei.

It is strongly recommended to use your own client ID as the default rclone ID is heavily used. If you have multiple services running, it is recommended to use a separate client ID for each service to avoid rate limiting issues.

Here is how to create your own Huawei Drive client ID for rclone:

Follow the detailed guides for complete setup instructions:

• Huawei HMS Core Web App Preparations
• Huawei HMS Core Server Preparations

Rclone uses the web application access method to connect to Huawei Drive. Before starting, you need to implement quick login authorization through Huawei Account Open Service. With user authorization credentials, rclone can call Huawei Cloud Drive Service APIs.

Create Server Application

Before accessing Drive service, developers need to create a server application first. For details, please refer to the WEB Application Access Development Preparation section in the “Huawei Account Service Development Guide”.

Enable Drive Application Switch

1. Log in to AppGallery Connect with your Huawei account.
2. Create a project or select an existing project.
3. Add a web application to the project.
4. Open “Project settings” for the application and copy the OAuth 2.0 Client ID and Client Secret from the “General” tab.
5. Open “API Management” for the project and enable “Cloud Drive”.
6. Add http://127.0.0.1:53682/ as a redirect URI for the OAuth 2.0 Client ID.

The older Huawei Developer Console may show some of the same credential information, but AppGallery Connect is the place to create the project, application, API permission, and redirect URI used by rclone.

Sign Huawei Cloud Drive Privacy Notice and User Agreement

Guide users to visit https://cloud.huawei.com/. First-time users need to sign the agreement before they can use Huawei Cloud Drive Service.

Application Access to Obtain Authentication Credential Access Token

Applications accessing Drive should use authentication credential Access Token. For specific acquisition methods, please refer to the WEB Application Access Development Guide section in the “Huawei Account Service Development Guide”.

Key steps summary:

1. Create or select a project in AppGallery Connect.
2. Add a web application to the project.
3. Enable Cloud Drive in API Management.
4. Configure http://127.0.0.1:53682/ as the OAuth redirect URI.
5. Copy the OAuth 2.0 Client ID and Client Secret from the application.
6. Provide the client ID and client secret to rclone during configuration.

Scopes

Rclone uses the following OAuth2 scopes when accessing Huawei Drive:

• https://www.huawei.com/auth/drive - Full access to Huawei Drive files (excluding application data folder)
• https://www.huawei.com/auth/drive.file - Access to files created by the application
• openid - OpenID Connect authentication
• profile - Access to basic profile information

The drive.file scope is included in the default set used by rclone.

Alternative scopes available (not used by rclone by default):

• https://www.huawei.com/auth/drive.appdata - Access to application data folder
• https://www.huawei.com/auth/drive.readonly - Read-only access to file metadata and content
• https://www.huawei.com/auth/drive.metadata - Read/write access to file metadata only
• https://www.huawei.com/auth/drive.metadata.readonly - Read-only access to file metadata only

The default scopes provide read/write access to all files in your Huawei Drive.

Modification times and hashes

Huawei Drive does not support setting modification times. The API always uses server-side timestamps, so file modification times from the source are not preserved during upload. Modification times are available as read-only metadata (mtime, btime).

Hash algorithm SHA256 is supported for file integrity verification.

Restricted filename characters

Huawei Drive has strict restrictions on file and directory names:

• Cannot contain: < > | : " * ? / \ or emoji characters
• Cannot be exactly . ..
• Maximum length: 250 bytes
• Single quotes must be escaped with \' in API calls

These restrictions are handled by rclone’s encoding:

• Backslashes \ are encoded
• Invalid UTF-8 sequences are encoded
• Right-side spaces are encoded

Invalid characters will be replaced according to the encoding settings.

Resumable uploads

Huawei Drive supports resumable uploads for files larger than the upload cutoff (default 20MB). Files are uploaded in chunks which allows for recovery from network interruptions.

File size limits

The maximum file size for Huawei Drive is 50 GiB.

Quota information

To view your current quota you can use the rclone about remote: command which will display your usage and quota information.

Options

Standard options

The wizard asks for these when you add the drive.

client_id

OAuth Client Id.

Leave blank normally.

Type: string

client_secret

OAuth Client Secret.

Leave blank normally.

Type: string

Advanced options

The wizard shows these under Advanced options. Most drives work without changing any of them.

token

OAuth Access Token as a JSON blob.

Type: string

auth_url

Auth server URL.

Leave blank to use the provider defaults.

Type: string

token_url

Token server url.

Leave blank to use the provider defaults.

Type: string

client_credentials

Use client credentials OAuth flow.

This will use the OAUTH2 client Credentials Flow as described in RFC 6749.

Note that this option is NOT supported by all backends.

Type: bool · Default: false

root_folder_id

ID of the root folder.

Normally this is auto-detected, but if it fails or you want to speed up startup, you can set it manually.

Leave blank normally.

Type: string

chunk_size

Upload chunk size.

Must be a power of 2 >= 256k and <= 64MB.

Type: SizeSuffix · Default: 8Mi

list_chunk

Size of listing chunk 1-1000.

Type: int · Default: 1000

upload_cutoff

Cutoff for switching to resumable upload.

Any files larger than this will be uploaded using resumable upload. The minimum is 0 and the maximum is 20 MiB (Huawei Drive API limit for single request uploads).

Type: SizeSuffix · Default: 20Mi

encoding

The encoding for the backend.

See the encoding section in the overview for more info.

Type: Encoding · Default: Slash,LtGt,DoubleQuote,Colon,Question,Asterisk,Pipe,BackSlash,Del,Ctl,LeftSpace,LeftPeriod,LeftTilde,RightSpace,RightPeriod,InvalidUtf8,Dot

description

Description of the remote.

Type: string

Limitations

Huawei Drive has some rate limiting which may cause rclone to slow down transfers to avoid hitting the limits.

File name restrictions

• File names cannot contain: < > | : " * ? / \
• File names cannot be exactly . ..
• Maximum file name length is 250 bytes
• Some unicode characters including emojis are not supported

API rate limits

Huawei Drive imposes API rate limits. Rclone automatically handles these by backing off when limits are hit.

OAuth2 token expiry

• Access tokens expire after 1 hour
• Refresh tokens expire after 180 days
• Rclone will automatically refresh tokens as needed

File size limits

• Maximum file size is 50 GiB
• Files larger than this cannot be uploaded

Upload behavior

• Files smaller than upload_cutoff (default 20MB) are uploaded in a single request using content or multipart method
• Larger files are uploaded using resumable uploads with configurable chunk size
• Maximum single chunk size for resumable uploads is 64MB
• Resumable uploads support automatic retry on network errors
• SHA256 hash verification is supported for uploaded files

Server-side operations

• Server-side copy: Files can be copied within Huawei Drive without downloading and re-uploading
• Server-side move: Files and directories can be moved/renamed on the server side
• Directory move: Entire directories can be moved with a single API call

Directory operations

• Huawei Drive supports creating empty directories
• Recursive listing is supported via --fast-list for efficient directory traversal
• Huawei Drive has a special “applicationData” folder for app-specific data (not accessible via rclone’s default configuration)

Error handling

Common errors and their meanings:

• 401 Unauthorized: Invalid credentials or expired token
• 403 Forbidden: Usually indicates insufficient permissions or API quota exceeded
• 404 Not Found: File or directory does not exist
• 409 Conflict: Directory already exists
• 429 Too Many Requests: API rate limit exceeded, rclone will automatically retry

Performance tuning

For better performance:

• Increase --transfers for concurrent operations (default is 4)
• Adjust chunk_size based on your network speed and file sizes
• Use --fast-list for operations on directories with many files to reduce API calls

Making backups

Huawei Drive is suitable for backups with some considerations:

• Use rclone sync rather than rclone copy to maintain exact directory structure
• Consider using --backup-dir to preserve deleted files
• Verify transfers with --checksum flag for critical data
• Be aware of the 50 GiB file size limit for individual files

Supported features

Huawei Drive supports the following rclone features:

• Copy - Server-side copy of files
• Move - Server-side move/rename of files
• DirMove - Server-side move of directories
• ListR - Recursive listing for --fast-list
• About - Storage quota information
• Purge - Delete directory and all contents
• CleanUp - Empty the trash
• UserInfo - Get user account information
• Metadata - Read and write file metadata/properties
• ChangeNotify - Poll for remote changes (used by rclone mount and rclone rc vfs/poll-interval)

Integration with other services

Huawei Drive can be used as a backend for various rclone operations:

• Mount as a local filesystem using rclone mount
• Serve over HTTP using rclone serve http
• Serve over FTP using rclone serve ftp
• Serve over WebDAV using rclone serve webdav

Note that some operations may be slower than local storage due to API limitations and network latency.