17/12/2017 UPDATE: This review was based on ExpanDrive 5. ExpanDrive 6 has been released with some big changes. Check out my review!
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. That includes Dropbox, Amazon Cloud Drive, Google Drive, and OwnCloud. 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. 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.
ExpanDrive behaves like an external USB attached drive, or more accurately a series of USB attached storage. Each of your cloud storage systems becomes a drive connected to your computer. 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. Similarly, you can save directly to them just like a regular external drive. The only difference is that the speed of access is highly impacted by the speed of your internet connection.