Bulk upload from drives

Bulk upload is just normal upload, scaled up. You drag a whole folder — or a mounted drive or memory card — onto Vault, and every file inside goes up in the background. The browser uploads each file in chunks straight to storage, double-checks it landed and opens, and keeps your folder structure intact.

Three things make a big upload go smoothly:

• Keep the drive plugged in. The browser reads files directly from the source, so an external drive or card has to stay mounted until that file finishes.
• Leave the tab open. Vault keeps the screen awake while uploading. If the tab does close or the connection drops, your progress is saved — see Pause and resume below.
• Wired beats Wi-Fi. For a large archive, a wired connection is steadier and usually faster than Wi-Fi.

The fastest way to move an archive is to drag it in. In Vault, open the project (or folder) you want the files to land in, then:

• Drag a folder, drive, or memory card from Finder onto the open project. A green drop zone appears that reads Drop folder to upload — into [destination]. Release to start.
• Hover over a specific subfolder or breadcrumb before you release, and that target lights up — so you can drop straight into the right place.
• Prefer to pick rather than drag? Click New in the sidebar, then Upload folder, and choose the folder from your computer.

Vault recreates the folder tree exactly as it is on your drive, so nested folders come across with their structure intact. A huge folder shows up as a single row — for example 2,400 of 4,000 — rather than thousands of separate lines.

If you only want specific files rather than a whole folder, you have a few options:

• Drag a selection of files onto the open project — the same drop zone handles it.
• Click New → Upload files, or just press ⌘U anywhere in the app, and pick the files.
• From the Home screen you can drop files onto the page to send them straight to My Vault root, then sort them into projects later.

A small dock appears in the bottom-right corner while anything is uploading. It shows the overall status, a progress bar, and a rounded time-remaining estimate. Single-click the dock to open the full-screen view, where files are grouped by destination with per-file status.

Each file moves through three states:

• Uploading — a progress ring counts up to 100%.
• Checking… — the bytes are safely stored and Vault is double-checking the file actually works.
• Checked — a green check. The file is safe.

Big uploads get interrupted — a closed laptop, a dropped connection, an unplugged drive. Vault is built for it.

• If an upload is interrupted, it comes back as Interrupted — resume. Open the dock and click Resume all, and Vault picks up from the parts that already landed instead of starting over.
• If a file's source bytes aren't still on hand, you'll see Add file next to that row — point Vault back at the same file on your drive (same name and size) and it continues.
• To stop an in-progress upload, click the X on the dock and confirm Cancel upload. Anything already uploaded stays saved.

Honest answer: it depends almost entirely on your own upload speed — the "up" number from a speed test, which is usually much smaller than your download speed. Vault uploads several files at once to make the most of whatever connection you have, but it can't move bytes faster than your line allows.

Here's the rough math for 5 TB, as an estimate, not a guarantee — real-world speeds run lower than these best-case numbers:

• On a 100 Mbps uplink: best case around 4 to 5 days of continuous uploading.
• On a 500 Mbps uplink: roughly a day.
• On a 1 Gbps fiber uplink: roughly half a day.

Faster uplink, faster upload — it scales straight down. Because uploads are resumable, you don't have to do it in one sitting; leave it running and it'll keep going (and pick back up after any interruption).

• "Free tier reached." If you hit your plan's included storage mid-upload, the dock prompts you to add a card to keep going. See pricing for what each plan includes.
• A file stalls or errors. Open the full-screen view, filter to Stopped, and resume — Vault retries from where it left off.
• Still stuck? Email support@totalvault.ai. We answer within one business day.