In one of my recent articles I had talked about the useful tools which can be used to upload content to your web site. But how would it sound if you can access the FTP server as a normal drive on your Windows PC.

Imagine just simply copy pasting files to your FTP server all from the comfort of Windows Explorer. This tool will not only make your life easier it will also allow you to use your FTP drive as an additional storage space for files. I personally use DreamHost for hosting this site and currently have around 258 GB of web space online. So imagine the number of files I can back up using this simple tool.

Using this software I can manage all my FTP accounts from within the Windows Explorer thus saving me lot of time connecting to a client and then uploading or downloading files.

Update: The software site is not responding when I tried. If you want you can download the software from Tucows.

Getting back to the question how you can do it, there is a nice little tool called FtpDrive that allows you to map your FTP server as a local Windows drive. Once you have downloaded and installed the software, you should see a tray icon like the screen shot below.

Clicking on the icon will load the FtpDrive Program. There are few basic options you need to setup here, namely the Drive Name, whether you want FTP drive to auto start with windows etc. In the right hand side uncheck the boxes that say Try retrieve from local NetView and Try retrieve from NetView Client-Server also leave all the input boxes empty.

After you have chosen all the options click on the Edit servers list manually button. This will open up a new window where you add in the FTP server details. Fill in the information and click on the add site button.

Once you have added all your sites, click on the Ok button in the server add screen and the main screen. That’s it you are done with the setup and you can now start accessing your FTP server as a local drive. To ensure that it’s working open windows explorer and see if the drive that you had entered in the initial setup is visible.

You will see a folder with the name of the site you chose while setting up the FTP site in FTP drive. If you have added more than one FTP site you will see all those as folders here. You can browse individual folders and view their contents just like normal explorer files.

The initial setup interface for FTPDrive is a bit crappy but once you have done the setup of FTP servers you can start using the FTP servers as a regular drive including performing all the actions that you would do on a normal Windows drive like copying, deleting, editing etc.

All in all I know have an additional drive for storage space, and also can now quickly upload any new themes or plugins without having to even use the FTP client. I personally use xPlorer2 for a Dual pane explorer so that I can easily view and manage more than one folder in the same window, which makes it even more easier to copy the files over.

Do you use any other tools to mount FTP server as your local drive. Was this tip helpful to you? Do let me know through your valuable comments.