Small Office in need of central file storage

[wisedave]

Hello,

I have a small office with 4 employees. We all work off of laptops (although I am about to bring a desktop in because I need a little more horsepower for some graphic stuff).

I have a number of files I would like everybody to share, update and save so we can all access them. I also need the ability to access them remotely.

What is the best way to do this?

Thx,

Dave

[rubberman]

My advice would be to purchase a small NAS (Network Attached Storage) unit. They connect into the office network and allow you to do exactly what you want, at a very reasonable price. For example, a Buffalo Tech TeraStation NAS with 8TB of data is less than $900 USD on buy.com (free shipping). They have many other options, with less storage (cheaper). I paid more than this, each, for two of their 1TB units about 6-8 years ago, and they are still functioning without problems on my network. One I upgraded to a 2TB capacity this year, and that holds system backups, Linux distributions, and copies of my purchased software. The other I use to store my music files. They are both configured as RAID-5 devices, and work really well in surviving disc failure (the excuse I used to upgrade the one unit - one drive started to fail - no data was lost).

[jingda]

Try remote software. File sharing is also good. Try teamviewer is awesome. If met all the requirements you want and is cheap. I can tell you how to use them if you want

[jlego]

yeah there is a hole bunch of ways to do this, i agree with both posters. you could go from simple file shares on a server, Microsoft share point, if you have exchange use the public folders, there is online hosted solutions. if they are docs maybe check out good docs? its free and has support for documents, excel and so on and is accessible anywhere there is an internet connection

[monem]

1- you can install windows server 2003 or 2008 and with active directory you can create folders and share them with access control.
2- or if you like free OS you can use linux server edition like ubuntu 10.04 server and install Desktop environment because linux server are command line and then install samba to allow you share folders with your windows users with user privileges for access.
Good luck

[wisedave]

Hello,

Thanks for all of the ideas. I think the learning curve for this will be steep. I am not sure if doing it 'in the cloud' would be an option.

I will do some research based on the recommendations here.

Cheers,

Dave

[jingda]

You are welcome dave

[jlego]

i ment google docs on my post above, sorry

[walayt]

I think that you should go for nas or go for easy browsing timer to make it short, i believe that whould work and will be easiear for your staff to acess what ever they want easily................

[rubberman]

Just remember the KISS principle. Small office == small solutions. Sharepoint? Too complex. A NAS behind your firewall is secure, and provides a very large data store for a very reasonable investment. Don't overthink this.

[walayt]

I got you right.