At a Glance

Expert’s Rating

Installing ExpanDrive. To install ExpanDrive, after you have double-clicked on the downloaded installation file, the setup program will begin. Click on the Next button to continue (Fig. Click on the radio button beside Install for anyone using this computer (Fig. ExpanDrive allows me to mount OneDrive and OneDrive for Business document libraries. I can also mount SharePoint libraries as well, including all of my subsites. This is largely beneficial as ExpanDrive is the only solution I have seen offered for doing this on a Linux host. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. ExpanDrive for Mac and Windows is a Fast Network Drive for Cloud Storage – SFTP, OneDrive, Sharepoint, Box, WebDAV, Dropbox, Google Drive and more. ExpanDrive for Mac and Windows is a Fast Network Drive for Cloud Storage – SFTP, OneDrive, Sharepoint, Box, WebDAV, Dropbox, Google Drive and more.

Pros

• Mount variety of cloud, network storage services as Finder volumes
• Near-native speeds browsing volumes in Finder
• Built-in storage browser for cloud, network volumes

Cons

• User interface changes aren’t all for the better
• Manual check for updates option removed from Settings
• No visual feedback for stalled or incorrect connections

Our Verdict

ExpanDrive 7 adds cloud and network-attached storage volumes to the macOS Finder, now with integrated search, smart offline sync, and file version management for supported services like OneDrive and Dropbox.

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By the time an application reaches version 7.0, users anticipate fewer whiz-bang new features as developers focus on refining core functionality and required compatibility updates. The question then becomes, has the software improved enough to justify buying an upgrade to the latest and greatest version, often on an annual basis?

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Such is the case with ExpanDrive, a venerable macOS utility that mounts cloud and network-attached storage in the Finder so you can more or less use them like locally-attached volumes. Despite a recent focus on eye candy, it’s what’s under the hood that makes the latest update worth a look.

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New look, new problems

ExpanDrive 6 ditched the traditional compact user interface in favor of a free-floating, expandable window opened by clicking a familiar menu bar icon that clutters the top of your screen. The revamped user interface introduced a built-in file browser allowing users to view, download, rename, move, or delete without mounting services in the Finder. There’s even shareable link support for services like Google Drive.

ExpanDrive 7 is an iterative upgrade, but a step back in several ways. Once a connection is mounted, for example, there’s no way to edit it without unmounting. That may not sound like a big deal until a connection becomes unresponsive due to spotty internet or service outage. When that happens, there’s no way to disable it, short of force quitting and manually removing the offending service from a preference file.

Even when the edit option is available, you can’t adjust the width of the Connections pane, so volumes with long nicknames overlap buttons on the right-hand side. Gone is the “Check for Updates” button in Settings—users have to trust the automatic updater or enable “Show in Dock” to manually initiate this option from the ExpanDrive menu.

Although the new UI is more visually pleasing, there’s little in the way of visual feedback when something goes wrong. Case in point: FTP, SFTP, and WebDAV servers unable to connect display an endless “Mounting Drive” message, rather than any indication of what might be happening.

Faster, more versatile

On the plus side, ExpanDrive 7 is faster than ever. The previous version boasted up to a 500 percent boost in transfer speeds thanks to a multi-threading StrongSync engine, and the latest edition ratchets things up yet again to fast and furious levels, particularly with larger files. Best of all, browsing remote connections in the Finder is finally as peppy as accessing native hard drives.

Such performance improvements can largely be attributed to intelligent caching, and ExpanDrive 7 addresses one longtime limitation by allowing users to change the location of such files to any volume, rather than consuming precious internal resources. The software also plays nice with Spotlight, so search queries now show results from remote volumes alongside local drives.

The most useful new feature is offline sync, allowing important files and folders to be saved locally for when internet connectivity is spotty or absent. Everything else stays in the cloud, available anytime while taking up little or no space. Microsoft Office fans can also rejoice, because ExpanDrive finally respects lock files, allowing read-only access for all but the person currently editing a document.

Last but not least, support for Azure Storage, Nextcloud (a fork of Owncloud), and Wasabi services have been added, but the biggest news isn’t even for Mac: ExpanDrive 7 now works with Ubuntu, Mint, CentOS, Redhat, and other Linux flavors, noteworthy after cloud storage provider Dropbox abandoned most support last year.

Bottom line

The user interface may be a work in progress, but ExpanDrive 7 delivers where it counts with performance improvements that almost make you forget you’re using remotely-connected storage.

ExpanDrive is a network filesystem client for MacOS, Microsoft Windows and Linux that facilitates mapping of local volume to many different types of cloud storage. When a server is mounted with ExpanDrive any program can read, write, and manage remote files (that is, files that only exist on the server) as if they were stored locally.^[4] This is different from most File Transfer Clients because it is integrated into all applications on the operating system.^[5] It also does not require a file to be downloaded to access portions of the content. ExpanDrive is commercial software, at a cost of $49.95 per license. A 7-day, unrestricted demo is available for evaluation.

ExpanDrive uses a custom FUSE implementation as its file system implementation layer on the Mac and Windows and system-packaged FUSE on Linux.

History[edit]

SftpDrive was the original version of ExpanDrive for Microsoft Windows. It was commercial software with a 6-week trial.^{[citation needed]}

ExpanDrive 2 was released on June 21, 2011^[6] adding support for plain FTP, Amazon S3 and a new ExpanDrive service named Strongspace Online Storage. ExpanDrive2 included a rewritten SFTP engine which laid the groundwork for a unified Mac and Windows code base.

Version 2.4, released in January 2013 was the first version to be released simultaneously for Windows and Mac.^[7]

ExpanDrive 3 was released on May 14, 2013 with a new user-interface and support for more drive types such as Dropbox, OpenStack, Rackspace and WebDAV.^[8]

ExpanDrive 4 was released on June 12, 2014 with dramatically faster access. ExpanDrive 4 also added support for Microsoft OneDrive, Copy.com, HP Helion Cloud, Owncloud and hubiC.^[9]

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ExpanDrive 5 was released on June 15, 2015 with a near-total rewrite of its core functionality.^[10]

ExpanDrive 6 was released on July 5, 2017, followed by a redesign to version 6.1 on September 25, 2017. The most recent version v6.3 was released on November 2nd, 2018. ^[11]

ExpanDrive 7 was released on May 8, 2019, which added support for Linux, A cloud storage browser and transfer application, multi-user file locking, search and version management. ^[12]

New features include improved performance and file versioning. An increased list of supported storage and cloud storage providers have been introduced since version 5, including Dropbox, Google Drive, Google Team Drives, Amazon Drive, Box, OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, Sharepoint, Openstack Swift, BackBlaze B2, Amazon S3 as well as the original SFTP, FTP or WebDAV server and SMB/Windows File Sharing.

See also[edit]

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• SSH file transfer protocol (SFTP)
• Secure Shell (SSH)

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References[edit]

1. ^'ExpanDrive Release Notes'. Retrieved Feb 10, 2021.
2. ^'ExpanDrive Release Notes'. Retrieved Feb 10, 2021.
3. ^'ExpanDrive Release Notes'. Retrieved Feb 10, 2021.
4. ^Tech Republic. 'Using ExpanDrive to mount remote file systems'. www.techrepublic.com. Retrieved 2014-10-28.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
5. ^Mac Apptitude. 'How to mount cloud storage in the Mac Finder'. www.macapptitude.com. Retrieved 2014-10-28.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
6. ^Jeff Mancuso (2011-06-21). 'ExpanDrive Blog » ExpanDrive 2 for Windows – FTP and S3, blazing fast SFTP'. Blog.expandrive.com. Retrieved 2014-10-28.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
7. ^Jeff Mancuso. 'ExpanDrive Blog » ExpanDrive v2.4 released - ExpanDrive Blog'. Blog.expandrive.com. Retrieved 2014-10-28.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
8. ^Rui Carmo (2013-05-19). 'ExpanDrive 3'. The Tao of Mac. Retrieved 2014-10-28.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
9. ^Brett Terpstra (2014-06-18). 'ExpanDrive 4, more services and faster sync'. Engadget. Retrieved 2016-10-11.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
10. ^www.expandrive.com/introducing-expandrive-5
11. ^updates.expandrive.com/release_notes/expandrive_win
12. ^www.expandrive.com/hello-expandrive-7/

External links[edit]

• Review of ExpanDrive at Macworld (November 2008)

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