But to be fair, these are limitations of FTP/SFTP, not ExpanDrive. Finally, since you’re working with remote volumes, performance won’t be as snappy as if you were working on a hard drive connected directly to your Mac. Similarly, actions that rely on Mac metadata, such as assigning color labels, don’t work, and Spotlight doesn’t index FTP/SFTP volumes. So what can’t you do with ExpanDrive-mounted volumes? Because you’re still working with FTP/SFTP servers, which don’t support Mac resource forks, you’ll want to compress files that store data in their resource forks before copying them to an FTP or SFTP server. As Apple’s dialog explains, you can avoid seeing this dialog by ejecting the volume while holding down control (to eject just that volume) or option (to eject all FTP/SFTP servers).ĮxpanDrive is AppleScript-able, and Magnetk also includes a Terminal utility, expan, that lets you mount FTP/SFTP shares from the command line or from within shell scripts. If you mount multiple FTP/SFTP shares using ExpanDrive, you’ll see this dialog whenever you try to eject one, even if the mounted volumes don’t all reside on the same remote server. One caveat: In Leopard, whenever you have multiple partitions from the same drive, or multiple shares from the same remote server, mounted and try to eject one, a dialog appears asking if you want to eject just that volume or all volumes from the same disk or server. When you’re done using a remote share, you just click on the eject icon next to it in the Finder-again, just as you would with any other removable volume. ![]() You can copy files to and from it and edit its contents, just like any other removable volume-within the limitations of your account login for the server, of course. (Mounted shares display a green indicator next to them in both locations inactive shares display a red indicator.) Assuming you have a valid connection to the server or share, it mounts in the Finder, and appears in Finder-window sidebars, just like any other removable volume. Click on Connect to connect immediately, or Save And Close to save the info for later in either case, your drive will appear in the Drive Manager list and the menu.įrom then on, you access a server or server share either by double-clicking on it in the Drive Manager, or, even easier, by choosing it from ExpanDrive’s menu. Click on New Drive, choose the drive type (FTP or SFTP), and then enter the necessary connection information if you want to connect to the server automatically whenever you log in, enable that option. The preferences window contains a few minor settings, but the Drive Manager is where all the action is: This is where you configure each FTP and SFTP server you want to access. ![]() Its only real interface is a pair of settings windows, accessed via a small menu-bar menu. (While ExpanDrive can be run from a standard user account, installing or updating MacFUSE requires an administrator account.) Once that task is successful, ExpanDrive can be used by any account on your Mac.ĮxpanDrive is mostly invisible while running, performing its tasks behind the scenes. The only time you’ll notice these MacFUSE underpinnings is the first time you launch ExpanDrive: You’ll see a dialog asking for permission to install the latest version of MacFUSE if you have a previous version installed, you’ll instead be asked to upgrade to the latest version.
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