Moving over
What it takes
Keep the mount for editing if you like it; use Vandle for the work where you need to see what the server actually said.
You already made the remote look like a drive letter
Mounting is a wonderful trick, right up to the point where you need to know why a write failed. Vandle gives you the explicit surface instead: the transfer, the permissions and the shell in one place.
Credit where it is due
Mounting remote storage as a drive is the least intrusive way to use it. Every tool you already own suddenly speaks SFTP, and for day-to-day editing that is hard to argue with.
What changes
Four things you get that you did not have.
- An explicit transfer surface, so a failure names the file and the reason instead of a generic I/O error.
- A terminal on the same connection for exactly those moments.
- A route per connection, with latency and exit visible while it runs.
- A default download target per connection instead of a cache directory you have to reason about.
Side by side
Mountain Duck and RaiDrive and Vandle
| Aspect | Mountain Duck and RaiDrive | Vandle |
|---|---|---|
| Model | A drive letter backed by a cache | An explicit surface with a visible queue |
| Failure reporting | Whatever the filesystem layer surfaces | The protocol error, on the file |
| Shell | Not covered | A terminal on the same connection |
| Routing | Per-mount proxy | A route per connection, switchable |
And the rest of it
Four more protocols came along
Replacing one tool gets you five. Whatever else that machine speaks is already a row on the same record - and every one of them takes the route you assigned.
Web
Real browsing, properly routed
SSH
A terminal that keeps up
SFTP
Two remote panes, no detour
WebDAV
The other half of file transfer
RDP
Desktops on a native surface
Local
Your own machine, in the same list
Also compared