HOW TO...Access cloud storage through File Explorer
by Nik Rawlinson
What you need: ExpanDrive Time required: 30 minutes
Online-storage services are great. They make it easy to drop the files you need on multiple computers into a single location, then have access to them everywhere that you happen to log in. However, most services offer only a limited amount of space unless you're willing to pay for an upgrade.
The obvious workaround is to sign up for a number of services, but this isn’t ideal. Saving your documents and files in several online locations means you may quickly lose track of where items are.
Running multiple file-sync programs – one for each service – also has its downsides. While that may save you several trips to your browser, it’s a waste of resources, as they take up drive space and keep your processor and memory busy. Those precious resources won’t then be available for more pressing tasks, which could make streaming services stutter and editing photos sluggish.
Over the years, several third-party providers have come up with a solution: a single client that syncs multiple cloud services. ExpanDrive is one of these, and in July it was made available for free after it was bought by US cloud-storage company Files.com.
Inside ExpanDrive, your services are stacked and synced alongside each other, as well as being added to File Explorer in Windows. Using it, you can get rid of all those synchronisation programs, reclaim resources on your PC, and, because all of the cloud services will live in the same window, you should find your files more quickly.
1 Install ExpanDrive
Launch your browser and visit www.expandrive.com. Click the red ‘Download for Windows’ button and, when it’s finished downloading, launch the ‘ExpanDrive Setup’ program from your Downloads folder. Windows will ask if you want to allow ‘this app from an unknown publisher’ to make changes to your device. Click Yes. ExpanDrive will then pop up its home screen.