DM24: Extending Your Hard Drive
We’re back this week to help you maximize your Mac’s hard drive. While these tips can apply to any computer, we both are speaking this week from the view of laptop users.
With the existence of so many different cloud services, we all have extra storage available beyond what is locally on our computers. The problem is to make the best use of that cloud storage… without the cloud storage taking up much needed space on your internal drive. We don’t want to have to manage a bunch of different external hard drives either… unless we’re talking about backing up.
I can hear you asking,
If I don’t sync my Dropbox or Google Drive to my computer, how can I easily access my files? Damashe, you certainly don’t mean for me to use the web browser like some kind of animal🙄
Of course not, I would never suggest such a thing. But what is the solution then? [1]
We want access to all that storage that’s available in the cloud, but we want to use it natively on our machines. Of course, on mobile devices, the solution is provided by the cloud vendor in most cases. I.e, when you open the Dropbox app on your iPhone, you can see all your folders and files, share them, and open them in other apps. That doesn’t work for your laptop or desktop though😦 [2]
That’s where the two apps we discuss this week can help. Both CloudMounter and Mountain Duck allow you to mount cloud services and remote servers as if they were external drives. This means that you get access to all that additional storage, you get to enjoy a native experience, and all at no major loss to your available internal storage. [3]
We talked about both of these apps because we both have used them ourselves. I am currently using CloudMounter and Michael is currently using Mountain Duck.
While the advantages are obvious to me, let me point some of them out:
- Browse cloud services like ordinary folders on your computer
- Use multiple accounts for the same service (your personal Google Drive and your work Google Drive for example)
- Maintain the ability to copy links to files and folders
- Encrypt folders on your cloud service of choice
Both apps are well maintained and are VoiceOver accessible. For me, having the ability to use my storage, without loosing internal space is a win-win😎
Connect with us and share your thoughts about extending your hard drive. You can follow us on Twitter [@damashe][dtwit] and [@Payown.][ptw]
