ExpanDrive allows Mac users to mount remote storage as though it was local.  While this alone isn’t rocket science, the variety of supported remote storages and the reliability of the software have made it a nearly indispensable tool.

I routinely use it to mount:

• the home directory on my linux host (over ssh),
• my personal Amazon S3 account, and
• my company’s corporate Amazon S3 account

ExpanDrive relies on the MacFUSE kernel extension.  MacFUSE is a Mac variant of the FUSE which allows programmers to implement complete filesystems as a user-space (i.e., not in the operating system kernel) application.  This is a huge advantage the technical bits of which are beyond the scope of this post.  Curious technical readers should check out the FUSE article at Wikipedia.

As a total bonus ExpanDrive supports and preserves OpenMeta metadata on the ssh and Amazon S3 volumes I’ve used.  I’ll be writing another post on OpenMeta soon.  Until then go get yourself a copy of ExpanDrive!