Mounting a remote filesystem on Windows 10 using Bash

Question

Now, that windows 10 is out I started wondering about something. Unix based systems have the possibility to mount remote filesystems using ssh. In a recent article I've read that Windows 10 Has finally gotten itself ssh support.

I was wondering if the mounting option is also included in this SSH integration and if any of you could tell me more about this and how to use this feature.

Update - April 5, 2016

The Windows 10 Bash update (Linux subsystem) is now in Beta. I am wondering if the situation has changed. Can we now mount remote filesystems from Windows 10?

Update - August 5, 2016

The Windows 10 anniversary update has been released. Has anyone got any info about this question?

Update - October 10, 2016

A few more months have passed. Lots of visitors have viewed this question but no answer has come up. I am happily using win-sshfs but would really appreciate a windows native method to mount remote filesystems.

Update - November 14, 2017

The software has become a little more stable. More people have had a chance to experiment with it and a few Windows Updates have come and gone. Still, I haven't found a way to mount remote filesystems natively in Windows 10. Is there anyone that has?

Answer 1

SFTP Net Drive is a brilliant free solution. Some features are pro only but most features you could need for home/small business use are supported.

Perhaps off-topic: If the "remote" file system is local and is on Linux anyway, you can use Samba to mount Linux shares on Windows. Samba is very powerful and versatile but it is not too much of a hazzle to setup a few home shares.

My personal experience with Dokan based programs in Windows 10 is that they don't work at all (or won't install).

Answer 2

Sorry for writing this as an answer, but I have not reached 50 rep yet to comment. I have successfully mounted ssh filesystem on windows 8 using cygwin about a year ago and even doing the mount as a system service (was going crazy with windows 8 permissions in samba). So, as long as you have a good implementation of ssh (openssh?) on your system you should be able to mount a ssh filesystem..

However, Ican not research this, since I refuse to install win10 (I care about my integrity) and even thinking about abandoning Linux for BSD (pulse audio, systemd).

So, you could achive this with openssh in cygwin, using cygwin to set up a system service or you might research if there is a ssh client / server for the windows bash shell.

However, it looks like Microsoft is working on this.. Take a look at this blog post: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/powershell/2015/06/03/looking-forward-microsoft-support-for-secure-shell-ssh/

Answer 3

Win-sshfs is able to mount remote file systems using SSH on Windows. It is using Dokany that is fork of Dokan and also compatible with Windows 10. I am using it myself on windows 10.

Answer 4

I have been on the Windows Evaluation, and had not heard of that ability. Dokan is an option, but I have not tried it on Windows 10.

https://code.google.com/p/win-sshfs/

Answer 5

RaiDrive is a fantastic, free alternative that provides the same SFTP drive mounting functionality as SFTP Net Drive. I wanted to provide this as alternative because I have found small instabilities in SFTP Net Drive with my use over several years (even after the initial development phase). However, RaiDrive has been stable through multiple updates over the 6+ month period that I have used it.

Answer 6

I found a native work around for the missing sshfs. In my case I wanted to edit files for which normally I would use sshfs. I found a work around in the mean time using rsync incremental update and a few bash files. There's a full description of it here:

http://collaboradev.com/2016/08/26/windows-10-bash-tips-and-tricks/