The limit of Transmit’s approach, as with iDisk, is that your interaction with the contents of files is naturally bound by the speed of the broadband connection on which you operate. Want to double-click a 50MB file to edit it? You have to wait for the 50MB file to download locally before that happens. Make a change and hit save, and you wait for that same file to be fully uploaded back to the source. (This is the same method used with Cirrus Thinking’s Dolly Space option in the Dolly Drive service, which lets files be written to storage managed by the firm.)

By contrast, Interarchy’s Net Disk is like iDisk with the synchronization option turned on. This is an extension in Interarchy of its Mirror feature, and you can choose whether a Net Disk only synchronizes changes to your computer, from your computer to the server, or both directions. Typically, you’d want both in order to simulate a real volume. When you first mount a Net Disk and you have either Download or Both Ways (bidirectional) mirroring set in the Mirror Mode menu, Interarchy makes a full local copy of all remote files. After that, any changes are synchronized back and forth, but don’t occur in real time. That is, when you save an updated file on the Net Disk, the file is immediately stored locally, while Interarchy uploads it behind the scenes in due time. Interarchy’s Net Disk works, in practice, just like a watched folder that Interarchy manages, but appears like a remote volume.

Of course, for large remote directories in which gigabytes of files might be in use, Interarchy’s approach requires too much network traffic if you’re working with just a handful of files, and Transmit would make more sense as an option.

(Image Caption: Transmit Menu: Select any bookmark from the Transmit menu, and the program mounts it as a disk in the Finder.) Select any of Transmit’s connection methods (FTP, SFTP, S3, and WebDAV), enter connection details, and click on Mount as Disk instead of Connect. You may also select any favorite (bookmarked connection) in the Favorites view and click the disk icon at the bottom, or right click the favorite and select Mount As Disk. Finally, if Show Transmit Disk in Menu Bar is checked in the Preference dialog’s General view, you may select any favorite from the menu to mount it as a disk.