A connected cloud drive shows Error or won't finish connecting
On Remote Drives, a drive shows a red Error instead of a green Healthy — transfers to it never start, and you can't browse it. Or a drive you're connecting sits at Connecting… and never finishes.
When you connect a cloud drive you grant SonicBit permission at the provider. That permission expires on the provider's own schedule, and it's never completed if the sign-in window gets closed — or blocked — before it hands back. Either way the drive stays on your list but stops working: it can't be browsed, mounted, or sent files. It's not a fault with your files, and nothing at the provider has been touched.
Reconnect the drive where it stands — you don't need to remove it and start over:
Open Remote Drives in the left sidebar. Each drive shows its provider and a status: Checking… while we test it, a green Healthy, or a red Error. On a computer, hover the Error and the actual reason appears — "Sign-in expired or invalid — reconnect this drive", "Access denied", "Couldn't reach the provider", and so on. That reason is worth reading before anything else, and worth quoting us if you end up writing in. (The reason shows on hover or keyboard focus, so on a phone you may not be able to see it — the steps below are the same either way.)
An errored drive shows a Reconnect button where Mount normally sits — click it. (It's also in the tile's ⋮ menu.) What comes next depends on the drive:
- Google Drive, OneDrive, pCloud — a sign-in window opens straight away. Sign in with the same account the drive was connected as, approve the permission, and let the window close by itself (it shows "You can close this window" and closes on its own).
- MEGA, FTP, 1Fichier, Cloudflare R2 — there's no sign-in window. You get a blank form instead: re-enter that drive's details (MEGA email and password, FTP host/username/password, 1Fichier API key, R2 keys).
Either way this repairs the drive you already have — it doesn't create a second one — so its name, its mount setting and anything pointed at it stay as they were.
If your browser blocks it you'll see "Your browser blocked the sign-in window. Allow popups for this site and try again." Allow popups for SonicBit, then click Try again in the dialog. If the sign-in was interrupted instead, the dialog says "Couldn't connect" — Try again restarts it from the same place.
If earlier attempts left you with several entries for the same account, delete the dead ones — a transfer sent to the broken twin looks exactly like a transfer that silently doesn't work. On each stale tile: ⋮ → Disconnect drive. That only removes it from SonicBit; your files at the provider are not deleted, and you can reconnect it later. Give the one you're keeping a clear name with ⋮ → Rename.
Once the pill is green, start the transfer again from My Drive: select the file → ⋮ → Copy to… (a multi-selection uses Remote Upload…), then pick the drive under Send items to….
Don't use the destination list to judge a drive's health. It hides drives whose sign-in has already been recorded as failed, but a drive that has only just started erroring can still be listed — and the transfer will fail. Remote Drives is the source of truth: green pill first, transfer second.
Two cases you can't fix from your side.
- Dropbox. Connecting a new Dropbox drive is unavailable at the moment, and Reconnect on an existing Dropbox drive stops with "This drive's provider can't be reconnected here." Existing Dropbox drives keep working until their sign-in expires — once it does, there's no self-serve repair yet.
- The sign-in completes at the provider but the drive never finishes testing, and reconnecting lands you in the same place.
In both cases, contact support and name the provider — some connections need us to look at them directly.
Mounting a drive into My Drive is a paid feature, and on the Free plan Google Drive is the only provider you can connect. Two things worth knowing:
- A drive can be connected and Healthy but not mounted — that's the normal state, and browsing it still works.
- Reconnecting is never plan-gated. If you connected OneDrive, MEGA or another drive on a paid plan and later moved to Free, you can still reconnect it — you just can't add new ones.
Reconnecting keeps happening
Some providers expire permissions faster than others, especially if you change your password there, revoke SonicBit's access, or turn on new security settings. Reconnecting is the whole fix each time — there's nothing to reinstall and no files at risk.
For connecting, mounting, moving files between drives and the rest of the tour, see Remote Drives.