Map SFTP to a Drive Letter

A few years ago we wrote an article that offered up a solution for quickly accessing an FTP site from Windows Explorer, but things got a lot more complicated if you were trying to work with an SSH/SFTP site. A couple of weeks ago a commenter, Shawn, mentioned a new application that recently came to fruition which lets you assign a SFTP connection to a drive letter in Windows Explorer.

The project, Win-SSHFS, does have some pre-requisites that it needs installed, but it will take care of those automatically during the installation process. After you get through the installation you can go ahead and open up the included Sshfs Manager app. As you can see in the screenshot above all you need to do is enter in the connection information, specify an available drive letter, and hit the Mount button. Give it a little bit to make the connection, and then it should appear in Windows Explorer.

You can use the Sshfs Manager to add as many connections as you want… assuming you have enough drive letters available. For each one you can specify whether you want it mounted when you start your computer, or you can just go into the app and mount them as needed.

I should also point out that you have the choice of using a password with the account, or you can also use a private key for authentication. Some users are given private key files to use instead of a password, and it’s nice that those will work with the app just as well as a password does.

Win-SSHFS Homepage (Windows only; Freeware)