How is the sftp/sshfs support on Windows for expand drive? I've used opensource options in the past for Windows and they were all pretty buggy. One that isn't so much would be one worth buying imho.
I've been using expandrive for the past year (and just upgraded to v3) and the sftp support is the fastest that I've tried. It caches what the directory structure looks like so browsing is quick. Opening and saving files takes about 1-2 seconds on average. Sometimes directories will get stale if I create something on the server, but hitting F5 or refreshing the directory fixes it pretty quickly.
I use it with ST2 for my editor, directly saving onto my remote dev box, and it works fairly well. My biggest hangup is actually with ST2 - I can't individually refresh project sub-directories, only the main one, and saving files in ST2 is a blocking operation -- can't do anything else, and when a save takes a couple of seconds, it can get frustrating. I've tried the SFTP plugin for ST2 and I still prefer this route.
I've had exactly your experience (expandrive, ST2, SFTP plugin) on OSX and I've also arrived at the same solution. Works well enough, but as you said, ST2's lack of auto refreshing of directories is a bit troublesome. Furthermore I've had situations where Expandrive wouldn't refresh either and I had to unmount/mount again - improvements in that regard is what I'd be looking for most in an update.
They're all somewhat stable, but their performance is far from as fast as Linux SSHFS. Win-sshfs is much faster than Expandrive and Eldos SFTP, but slightly more buggy.
Of those three I recommend win-sshfs, Expandrive would have been worth it if its pricing were not so extreme. You get support though!
The original version of the product, back pre-2009 was called SftpDrive and was Windows only. In many ways it has long been our core product. But as time goes on more people are using various cloud services and fewer people are using SFTP.
Thanks. I prefer sftp for my own servers so I don't have to open up another point of access (plus for mounting things like my Android phone [it's rooted and I mount it with ssh to gain access to the live sqlite db in apps I'm working on]).
Tried out the trial a bit ago and it seems to work fine with a dropbear ssh client for Android so I can mount my Android device. Some clients I've had issues with working with dropbear or not letting me connect with root access (and the root directory, but no issues like that here). Happy with it so far.
Update, had some issues with it refreshing the cache. Hitting f5 didn't seem to change file statuses after erasing files (using windows 7). Had to disconnect and reconnect the client to get them to update in sftp.
