---
title: "Importing your files"
date: "2024-02-14T06:18:38+00:00"
summary: "Learn how to manually import your Drupal files to Cloud Platform. Follow our step-by-step guide to upload and manage user files, ensuring seamless integration with your application's filesystem."
image:
type: "page"
url: "/acquia-cloud-platform/importing-your-files"
id: "17e86d19-3544-4426-bd00-1361d0a5cf9d"
---

This page describes manually importing the files of an existing Drupal application into Cloud Platform, as part of the process of [manually importing the entire application](../manual.html). For information about other methods of importing an application, see [Importing an existing application](/acquia-cloud-platform/create-apps/import).

Cloud Platform stores user-uploaded files of a Drupal application (the `/files` directory) on a network filesystem shared across web nodes. The network filesystem for your application is accessible as `/mnt/gfs/[SITE].[ENV]` (also accessible as `/mnt/files/[SITE].[ENV]`), where `[SITE]` is the name of your application on Cloud Platform and `[env]` is the Cloud Platform environment (such as `prod`, `test`, or `dev`). These files directories are subdirectories of the network filesystem, such as `/mnt/files/[site].[env]/sites/[subsite]/files`. For more information about the file system, see [Working with files](/acquia-cloud-platform/manage-apps/files).

In your deployed Drupal [docroot](/definitions/docroot), which is on the local disk for performance, Cloud Platform creates a symbolic link from the files directory to the actual files directory in the network filesystem. This symlink allows Drupal to access the files in the location it expects.

For example, `[docroot]/sites/default/files` is set up to be a symbolic link to `/mnt/files/[site].[env]/sites/default/files`. Cloud Platform creates this symbolic link in any subdirectory of `docroot/sites` containing a file named `settings.php`. If you have a multisite configured with the file `docroot/sites/example.com/settings.php`, Cloud Platform creates `docroot/sites/example.com/files` as a symbolic link to `/mnt/files/[site].[env]/sites/example.com/files`.

To import your user-uploaded files to your Cloud Platform application:

1.  [Enable SSH access to your infrastructure](/acquia-cloud-platform/manage-apps/command-line/ssh/getting-started).
    
2.  Upload your files to the user-uploaded files directory using the `sftp`, `scp`, or `rsync` command. This directory is `/mnt/files/[SITE].[ENV]/sites/default/files` or, for multisite installations, `/mnt/files/[SITE].[ENV]/sites/[sitedir]/files`. For more information, see [Understanding files](/acquia-cloud-platform/manage-apps/files/about). For examples of using `rsync`, see [rsyncing files on Cloud Platform](/acquia-cloud-platform/manage-apps/files/transfer-files/rsync).