So you’ve got a network of 3 or 4 wired machines, a couple of laptops, and you’d like to have whatever files you need available whenever you want whether you are connected to your home network or not. That is the promise of Windows Home Server. So what is the best way to manifest it?
Here a couple of ways you might manage your files. (Please weigh in with your own opinions as we’re always looking for a better approach.):
Copy All Your Files to Shares on the Server:
Upside: You’ll pretty much have access to ALL your files whether you are connected to your family network or connected to the Internet. You can even remap your default My Documents, My Pictures & My Music Folders so the WHS shares look like local files. See here for instructions.
Downside: If you’re not connected, you don’t have access to ANY of your files. You also don’t get to enjoy the benefits of WHS terrific backup and restore if your files aren’t kept on the client machines.
Sync Your Files with SyncToy:
Upside: You can download a nifty little utility from Microsoft called SyncToy (the latest version 1.4 can be found here: SyncToy - there is a beta of 2.0 here.) With it you can synchronize your files from any of you clients (say the laptop you use all day at work) with a shared folder on WHS. This way all the files are available to any computer connected to the network or through the Internet AND you still have all you files on your main computer (like your work laptop) even when you are NOT connected to the network.
Downside: You’ve got two copies of all your files which is not a big deal unless you have a lot of big files (could be tricky for the graphic designers or video editors.) Plus you could run into some problems if you change the files on both machines between syncs (Say you’ve been working on a project at work all week, you forget to sync it up with the home server, then you work on the same file on the home server. SyncToy is going to run into problems when you try to sync again.)
