by simon baird

Friday, October 14, 2005

Map a drive via FTP or WebDav

This is pretty cool. There's a utility called "Net Drive" from Novell that lets you map a windows drive via FTP or WebDav. This is better than using "My Network Places" for ftp because you can edit files in place on the remote site. Has to make your faviourite ftp client obsolete. Weirdly you can't find this at novell.com. (Discovered by Clint). Update
This made the front page at digg.com and got about 6,000 hits over the weekend! I've looked into the license a little closer. I believe Novell at some stage licensed a version of WebDrive to bundle with Netware. Even though they seem to be encouraging it's free distribution they're probably not supposed to. Read the EULA here. So you shouldn't use this unless you or your company has a Netware 6 license. [Listens for the sound of 6000 people uninstalling... ;]. Also note that WebDrive supports secure ftp while Net Drive does not.

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

Here is a link to it on Novell's website.

Anonymous said...

Funny, look just like the webdrive software...hmm...

Anonymous said...

Does it support Secure FTP? That's the only protocol our server admins would even consider.

Anonymous said...

Secure FTP is a must for me too. I tried the download, but I'm getting errors...

Anonymous said...

Backup Download:

http://stats.czug.org/ndrv41862.exe


Novell seems to have removed it from thier servers.

HWJ

Anonymous said...

WebDrive is much further developed and is a great program. It supports https WebDav, which M$ deosn't even do. It gives you a secure drive letter for access to SSL hosted directories.

http://www.webdrive.com/index.php?pg=./products/webdrive/index

simon said...

This story was picked up by The Gadget Guru and also by Engadget who created a Net Drive Howto.

Anonymous said...

"WebDrive is much further developed and is a great program."

Actually netDrive ís webDrive.. Novell bought a license, but not to redistribute.. That's why there not keen on promoting the free download..

Anonymous said...

NetDrive is not free. I inquired about the use of NetDrive for a project and this is what I received from Novell Customer Support:

Hi Gary,

You must have purchased or purchase Netware 6 or iFolder in order to use Novell NetDrive. Call me if you need further help and we can connect you with a Tech Specialist.

Regards,
Melissa

Melissa Niu
Government Inside Sales
Novell, Inc.
http://www.novell.com
mniu@novell.com
(801) 861-1618 phone
(801) 861-6317 fax

Anonymous said...

NetDrive suffers from the problem that if the connection goes down, any process that tries to get a list of drives will freeze for ever. At this stage, nothing I try works - not asking NetDrive to disconnect the drive, not killing the netdrive process.

Anonymous said...

mirrored here

Paul Flask said...

also a great find: http://directransfer.net i moved my site (<10Mb) for free.

Anonymous said...

a free client is Red Drive that supports FTP, FTPS, SFTP and WebDAV protocols.

http://www.jscape.com/reddrive/

Cymen said...

I tried Red Drive but it sucks:
- doesn't mount as a drive letter
- deep integration with explorer
- high memory usage: 16MB+
- can't drag and drop files between remote folders
The last issue was the killer -- uninstalled now.

iMickey503 said...

Get the D-L here as well and a full write up of the abandonware stuff. Personally, I love novel and i really like net ware. Wish I worked with these guys. They really had some kick ass stuff!

http://www.freewarereview.info/2007-01/netdrive_-_browse_ftp_file_structures_like_virtual_explorer-style_drives.html

Anonymous said...

New 2008 versions of NetDrive at http://www.netdrive.net has improved a lot than earlier ones.

Anonymous said...

I was able to map a Drive Letter to a ftp site using Vista. XP apparently is limited with a different internal version of webclient in C:\WINDOWS\System32\svchost.exe

Anonymous said...

I contacted NetDrive support and they said it supports FTP SSL/TLS (FTPS).

Quote from the email:

"Thank you for your interest in our product. NetDrive supports FTPS and SFTP. You can configure it in the "Advanced" option panel."

Anonymous said...

Try FTP Drive. It's free and supports secure FTP.
You can find it here: http://www.killprog.com/fdrve.html

mmmbuzz said...

Novell NetSync works for webDAV and anyone can map a webDAV drive with any Apple Mac OSX even iPhone See webDAV.org Goliath Mapping is easy and free. See the support pages at SwissDisk if you need a little more help. Also, BitKinex has a free webDAV client, so does GoodSync. Even MS Windows and Explorer support webDAV via built in webfolders. Yes, for full file management capability you need to use a webDAV client. Anyone can easily map a network drive. Even smart phones support webDAV and with a webDAV app you can sync, i.e. backup, your contacts, calendar, files, etc. FYI SwissDisk has free accounts and they honor $1 per GB for anyone referencing blog posts! I'll stick with free myself

Unknown said...

netdrive from novell is an abandonware
new korean netdrive from marcodata is extremely buggy (take a look at their support forum)
and finally there is some new piece of software that works well and is compatible with win7 x64:
http://www.directnet-drive.net/