![]() I know with Eclipse, it being a fully featured development environment, most user possibly use it to manipulate files in a local development environment and be able to quickly debug, test, run etc. Whenever I worked on a simpler project or wanted to do a quick change in a file, PHP or another setup file, I could just open a file from an FTP server and also save a file like that. I am moving to Eclipse from a programmer's editor (UltraEdit) and I am missing a feature that was so useful for me. So I’d rate ExpanDrive 3 as a definitely worthwhile upgrade for that feature alone.I understand that what I am trying to do is not the most common thing if it is so hard to find an answer for my problem elsewhere but I still think it is a valid question about a valid situation. A few of my colleagues have been doing similar stuff with S3 storage and off-site backups for years, but this is just simpler, and (at least in my case) pretty fast.Ī second reason I like the Dropbox support is that I’m also moving a lot of stuff to our own cloud storage service, CloudPT (which, incidentally, also has a very nice, full-featured API), and as such I’m slowly phasing out 2 Dropbox for a number of things. Now I can just mount Dropbox as a remote drive whenever I need access on the go, which is much more practical. ![]() And those 4GB are clutter on most of my machines – hence my using selective sync for them.īut I even though I don’t need those files on all of my machines all of the time, every now and then I do need to add something to the backup set or get at it, and it’s a royal pain to do that via Dropbox alone – I usually have to go about that on my home machine, often via VNC. ![]() This because the trouble with file syncing cloud storage is that, well, it gets synced. This last bit is perhaps the most interesting to many people, so I’ll detail it a bit further: I use Dropbox’s selective sync feature for a few things, one of which is to keep a fairly large (currently 4GB+) Backups folder where I drop encrypted files and other sundry for off-site storage. And, now, mounting a Backups folder in my Dropbox.Fetching stuff from FTP servers (for which I’ve always found the Finder totally useless on its own).Editing files on remote machines via SFTP/ SSH (an everyday affair, and a setup I love because I can use whatever editor I want and replicate entire file trees with ease) 1.Even rsync worked fairly speedily atop mounted volumes, and that’s pretty much a worst case as far as file system access is concerned.īut my use cases for remote file access revolve around three main scenarios: In UseĪlthough it’s impossible to do sane benchmarking when accessing filesystems over the Internet, I’ve been merrily editing files across the Atlantic and to almost-local servers without any issues – just like I did with version 2 – and have noticed no constraints whatsoever. The old layout used a modal pop-up that overlap the drive listing, though, and the multi-pane window makes it a trifle easier to manage more volumes (which is pretty relevant for me, given that I have over a dozen remote mounts set up on it), so the changes are welcome. ![]() That is immaterial in daily use (you only need to go there to add new drives, and I personally only use the menu bar icon to mount drives and the Finder to unmount them), but despite the cleaner look I sort of miss the old design. There have also been some cosmetic changes – the drive manager window is now a bigger, roomier affair, but, alas, it doesn’t feel as native as the older version. Well, the big ticket items for me are improved performance (always a nice thing to have, especially since its smart caching has made slow connections eminently bearable in the past), WebDAV support and access to Dropbox – as in being able to mount Dropbox as a local drive, which is something that I find very handy indeed these days. If there’s one thing you can’t ever be without, it’s storage options – and access to them.ĮxpanDrive 3 was recently revamped, and given that I’ve been using it for years now for FTP and SFTP/ SSH access to remote hosts I it was a no-brainer to give the upgrade a spin – you can do that yourself for free for a week, and upgrade from version 2 for $19.95 till the end of May.įull Disclosure: It bears noting that despite being a paying user since version 1.x, I got my upgrade license for free. ![]()
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