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Preferably open source, but I'll take free (as in beer) if that's not available or even a commercial product if it is clearly the best option. I know there is a client built into Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Vista, but I'd rather not upgrade just for NFS.

Soren asks for alternatives/instructions in the comments:

The nekodrive on google code looks like it could be promising -- however it falls short on good instructions and it look like it is only available for 64bit, so I would accept an answer which would provide installation instructions only and/or for a port for how to install on 32bit.

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The vast majority of the answers below have extended your original request to many other protocols (SMB, SSH, SCP, SFTP you name it). If your server is beyond your control and only cares to be a NFS server, that won't help even a bit. A good commercial NFS client for windows is included in Reflection X - an X-windows stack for Windows. If you use the trialware, make sure to select the non standard install and to tick the corresponding check box. – Alain Pannetier May 15 '11 at 6:58
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The nekodrive on google code looks like it could be promising -- however it falls short on good instructions and it look like it is only available for 64bit, so I would accept an answer which would provide installation instructions only and/or for a port for how to install on 32bit – Soren Aug 18 '11 at 13:22
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7 Answers

up vote 5 down vote

muCommander

muCommander is a lightweight, cross-platform file manager with a dual-pane interface. It runs on any operating system with Java support (Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, *BSD, Solaris...).

enter image description here

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That looks like exactly what I want. I'll try it out later today. – Ryan Ahearn Oct 29 '09 at 18:50
Have been testing version 0.8.5 and found (1) Does not map the NFS share as a drive, so no good for anything else than copy files (not the point of a network share, so major FAIL), and (2) the commaner window mount/unmount the NFS drive for every subdirectory -- so seriously slow as well -- not a good NFS solution or alternatives to SAMBA/SMB – Soren Aug 22 '11 at 1:09
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up vote 2 down vote

Never really found a good one, may want to consider a VM and Live CD of Linux, it is what I have had to do in the past. I got so fed up with the process that the upgrade to Business sounded like a blessing after only a couple weeks of the solution I mentioned. If you have any control over this server or can request SAMBA or SFTP be installed you could also do that.

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up vote 1 down vote

Unless performance is a concern, I'd recommend using SftpDrive, which lets you map an actual drive letter over SSH. It's really a great product, and on a local network the transfer speeds are slower than samba, but not terrible.

On a local network, Samba is the best option.

http://www.magnetk.com/sftpdrive/

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up vote 1 down vote

Since Windows Services for Unix seems that it won't install on Windows Vista Home Premium, I can only add another option that might be of use:

WinSCP is a freeware program allowing FTP/SFTP/SCP file operations to a system with an SSH server. Although it's not exactly what you want, you can drag&drop files from an Explorer window to the WinSCP window (works both ways, actually), and it also has an option (☞ Preferences → ◎ Explorer-like) that makes it look like a plain windows explorer window. However, this allows only GUI operations, not programmatic ones.

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up vote 1 down vote

Just install XP on a computer, add in the "Services for Unix" patch from Microsoft, and mount the NFS shares on that system.

Then you share those mounted filesystems as Windows shares and mount them on the Vista machines. You have a bottleneck at the XP server, but if you aren't using this for streaming video, it should do fine. If you are, consider copying the file to a temporary location on the Vista box and deleting when you are done. Alternatively, use CygWin.

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up vote 1 down vote

Nekodrive

The target of this project is to implement NFS (Network File System v2/v3/v4.1) over the Dokan user file system for Windows. This lets you mount very easily an NFS export as a local Windows drive. You don't need any NFS Windows client to access the NFS remote export, you can just use Windows Explorer. The current version doesn't support NFS v4.1 yet.

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The nekodrive on google code looks like it could be promising, but is still immature; it falls short on good instructions and does not (yet?) map a NFS share to a windows Drive. – Soren Aug 24 '11 at 14:18
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up vote 1 down vote
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ProNFS

The NFS Client is a program running under the MS Windows operating system in order to mount one or more shared network resources from one or more NFS Servers and to share access to files and directories with other PCs and UNIX users across a network.

enter image description here

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While NFS Client does apear to work, then it was hard to find the right tool on the site (I ended up downloding 3 different products), and the installation process looks like it was designed for Windows 3.1 and never revisited, PLUS is does feel slow when accessing files on the NFS share. – Soren Aug 22 '11 at 17:04
While this is a $40 cost, then this is actually the only working solution I have seen.... – Soren Aug 24 '11 at 14:23
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