It’s fine for smaller files, but for large ones, it’s just not a practical function to have to manually keep track of what I need to put back and where it belongs. So this in practice means I need to copy them to a local drive first, work on them, and then when I am done, copy them back. I deal with a lot of data in the cloud, and a good chunk of them are more than 100mb, many are more than 1gb. So you have to maintain your internet connection. Small files are stored locally somewhere in a cache hidden away while they transfer, and then removed once the transfer is complete, larger files though are not. The downside of this is that the transfer does not happen in the background except for small files. ExpanDrive connections screen showing an active transfer So for example, if I were copying image.jpg from Dropbox to Google Drive it would tell me that image.jpg is being downloaded from Dropbox and uploaded to Google Drive. I did notice that in the ExpanDrive menu accessed from the taskbar it does show you what file is presently being used in some way on each cloud drive. So on a Mac, your Finder file transfer dialogue is open telling you how long there is left and so on. The noticeable difference though is that it behaves like a native file copy.
Adding ExpanDrive Connections File transfersįiles seem to upload or download just as fast as Dropbox, Google Drive and Amazon Drive’s own applications. Really that is all you need, and it delivers it with a simple interface that looks good as well. You can add or remove cloud connections, eject and reconnect storage locations (useful if they failed to connect for some reason), you can edit the connection settings, you can see any background transfers that are running, and check for updates. ExpanDrive Settingsįrom the taskbar icon you have the ability to control your connections and monitor what they are doing. Any clouds you have connected during setup will also now appear as external drives on your Mac, and you can access them just like you would a USB drive.
During the installation, you can connect your storage locations if you wish, and once it’s installed, a taskbar icon becomes available. It’s to the point and doesn’t mess around. So after using it for 7 days, I’ve tried to cover off all the things I would do or use on a regular basis.ĮxpanDrive has a straight forward installer.
Background file transfers for small files and real-time transfers for large files.Connect to multiple storage platforms at once, including most common platforms, with a single application.So it is relatively inexpensive, with additional discounts for multiple licenses and for educational or non-profit users.
Once the trial expires, you can purchase a single-user license for USD $49.95 or with lifetime upgrades for USD $74.95.
The only difference is that the speed of access is highly impacted by the speed of your internet connection.Īt the time of writing ExpanDrive has a free 7-day trial (it was 30 days when I first planned to test and compare it, but by the time I began the test it was disappointingly reduced to 7 days). Similarly, you can save directly to them just like a regular external drive. As long as you are on the internet, you can then enter these storage destinations anytime and access the files on them as you would any other external drive. Each of your cloud storage systems becomes a drive connected to your computer.
Manually removing files from synchronising with my various cloud accounts is a pain, especially since there are terabytes of data in my Dropbox and it takes quite a while to load the full folder tree.ĮxpanDrive behaves like an external USB attached drive, or more accurately a series of USB attached storage. I’m also looking at it as a way of reducing the data footprint of those cloud platforms on my local machine, so not actually storing files locally is a significant benefit here. That includes Dropbox, Amazon Cloud Drive, Google Drive, and OwnCloud. I started trialling ExpanDrive 5 to see if, compared to Odrive, it would be a more or less viable alternative to running all the different cloud synchronising apps for all the different cloud services I use. UPDATE: This review was based on ExpanDrive 5. ExpanDrive 6 has been released with some big changes.