Friend: ExpanDrive Mac and Windows: 'Ridiculously simple SFTP/FTP/S3 drive access'

I will be describing ExpanDrive for the Mac but there is also a Windows version available.

Before I talk about ExpanDrive I want to be sure to say that there are any number of applications that work much like ExpanDrive. In fact ExpanDrive is based on the open-source MacFuse project and Macfusion is one freely available open-source front-end. There are options available for other platforms as well. (I've already mentioned the Windows version of ExpanDrive.)

The utility allows you to define connections to remote servers (using SFTP, FTP, or Amazon's S3 online storage service) and then mount and access those connections in the same way that you would a locally mounted volume (a volume on a locally attached USB hard drive for example.) This means that you can interact with files on a remote server as you would local files and folders, both in the Finder and other applications. For an Ode user, this means that you can manage your site as if you were working with a collection of files and folder on your computer, without the need to explicitly push anything to the server. It's an intuitive, efficient and elegant solution. What's more because working with an Ode site primarily involves text files, which are relatively small in size, ExpanDrive and Ode work work beautifully together (in terms of responsiveness and performance). ExpanDrive itself seems remarkably fast, in comparison to other, similar products. According to the developers 'the SFTP core' has been rewritten for version 2.0. This means that uploading photos, videos and other media (and even playing these files directly from the mounted volume through ExpanDrive) should be quick and efficient too.

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Other features:

Any connection can be configured to reconnect automatically...

...so that it seems as if the remote drives are always available. From the website

'Our robust networking core ensures that if a connection is available, your drive is available'.

Easy install

Download the .dmg from the website. Mount the disk image (which should happen automatically, or you can double-click the downloaded file). Drag the app itself to the Applications folder.

Configuration is as straightforward as it can be.

Enter your login credentials for the remote server and you're done.

Localizations

According to the website, ExpanDrive is available in: Deutsch, Nederlands, Français, Español, 日本語, 中文, Dansk, Norsk, Svenska, Suomi, Română, Lietuvių kalba, and Tiếng Việt.

If you're interested in ExpanDrive, I recommend taking a look at the short video introduction/demo on the product website.

ExpanDrive is not free, though there are free alternatives. A single user license is not especially cheap at $39.95. There is a 30 day unrestricted demo available.