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Help ! What Storage Solution Do I need ?

L

LounoM

Junior Member
I have a problem currently with how I manage my files.

Here is the situation :

My company consist of 2 people, me and my partner. We work from home most of the time but once in a while we will go work at each other's house or at our offices. We both have a laptop and a desktop each. So that is 4 computer that all have the "same" files... or at least different version of the same files, because its hard to manage... Like i said the problem is that the syncing of those file is done manually, everytime i want a file i need to transfer it from desktop to laptop and vice versa, sometimes i forget then i have the wrong versions, then if my partner need some files he will have to ask me and then i need to send file to our ftp or through msn, which in general is a pain to do, and then he needs to resend those back...

I would like somekind of server, ( NAS ? ) which allow me to do this :
- Me and my partner use the server to store all our files.
- The files are backed up on a regular schedule on the server (server has 2 drives?).
- We access our files directly from the server, it appears just like if it is another drive attached on our computer, from windows explorer. ( i think this is called mapped drive )
- If we are within the LAN reach of the server, then file transfer is faster because we use LAN connection, if we are outside LAN reach, we still access the files in the exact same way ( no crappy internet browser view or ftp crap ) but the speed is reduced to the internet connection that is available .
- Transfer speeds in LAN mode and Internet mode need to be as fast as possible, I will have a very fast internet connection at my house soon so the server will probably located here.
- Maybe have some folder in our 4 computers to automatically sync with some folders on the server, so that we dont have to download the files or upload the files, everything is done automatically ???

Not sure if all this is possible, I have no ideal how to set this up... There is still a problem in this setup when dealing with large files without being in LAN, but it would be better than nothing... Anyhow I dont know how to do it, but the point of all this is to make our lives easier, and to have easy access to all of our files anytime from any of our computers, and reduce the number of file being manually duplicated everywhere, this create problem in the long run, we all end up with different version of the files and its just a mess.
 
The answer to your question depends partially on what kind of files you work with. There are many ways to do what you want, but each have their pros/cons.

How much data? (How many total GigaBytes?)
What's the typical file size?
How many different files do you work with each day? Do you work on a single file for many hours, or do you have to view/work on dozens of files an hour?
Do you work with databases?
Do you need a record of who worked on a file and when?
How much money are you willing to spend if necessary to get a "perfect" solution?
 
I mentioned this in your other thread, but I'll put it here to get better feedback.

I think a VPN would be a good solution. Something like Hamachi which is free (they do have a pay-for version) and easy to setup. Using a VPN means you can access the server the same way no matter where you are, using \\servername\shared for example. You wouldn't have to use FTP or anything like that to get to the files. Put the VPN software on your laptop and you get the same thing.

The question then would be do you work "live" off of the server? Or do you work locally and then "backup" the files to the server periodically, either on a schedule or manually update files. If you work "live" off the server then you need a backup since you would only have one copy of the file.

While I don't use it for exactly the same purpose, I use hamachi to share files between my fileserver, my brother at college, and my parents.
 
That looks a pretty decent unit, but if the OP is remote, then he'd have to resort to FTP transfers which i think he's trying to avoid.
 
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