Back in February we reviewed a great little piece of software for OS X and Windows called Expandrive. In a nutshell, Expandrive makes interacting with FTP servers as easy as interacting with an external hard drive or a networked drive. FTP connections appear as drives and you can browse them and drag/drop files just as if you were using Finder or Windows Explorer — because, well, you are using Finder or Windows Explorer. During this past week, Expandrive announced a major upgrade in the form of version 2.0 for Mac and if you’re an Expandrive user, you need to check it out asap. Brief change log:
- All new SFTP Layer
- Up to three times faster when transferring large files
- New metadata-caching architecture that is faster and more reliable
- Experimental support to detect updates made on the server within ~20 seconds.
- Utilizes OpenSSH to take advantage of Kerberos auth, public key auth, etc on Leopard.
- Amazon S3 support — access Amazon S3 accounts like a filesystem, connecting to the root or an individual bucket
- Refreshed GUI with customizable drive icons
- In line eject/show in finder buttons
- Many many enhancements to FTP/FTPS, no longer in beta
There is a caveat, however. As the new build is essentially a new app, upgrades are not free for everyone. If you purchased Expandrive within the past 60 days, you’re good to go at no cost. If you purchased the program before then, an upgrade to 2.0 will run you $19.95. New users enjoy a 30 day free trial and then it’s $39.95 to stick with it.
