How to create file server in windows 10

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Posted by Blade-Runner

14 Replies

• can3gxw

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  tabasco

  I set this same thing up several years ago and it was a piece of cake.  It was very simple, for personal reasons [me, on the road, my cousin in Europe, etc].

  This is NOT a corporate/company setup, so it may not work for you.

  - WIndows 10 Pro
  - Set a static IP
  - Use a DNS forwarder [like NOIP.com] so that you will connect to the address [as your public IP will change]
  - Port forwarding on your router to send the traffic to your file server
  - FILEZILLA FTP SERVER

  Then you just set up the users on your PC for the appropriate access, and FileZilla will do the heavy lifting of serving up your files.

  It was a really easy setup and their [FileZilla] documentation was very simple to follow.

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• If you want a really fancy front end, why not setup wordpress and use a file server plugin? it would allow for username, password, captcha, etc.

  If you are looking for a media server, look at Plex.
  

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• Does it have to be Windows 10? Nextcloud is a linux package that provides a dropbox-like file share. You can download, upload, browse them online [pdf, jpg, etc], and more. Plus, it has a bit of security built in. And, it's free.

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• Do you need to stay on Windows 10, or is that just what's running on the machine right now?  If you don't need to stay on Windows, then ownCloud and Nextcloud are two software solutions that are specifically designed to do just that.  I haven't used either one myself, but I've seen them suggested by lots of other people that have used them.  It looks like both of them have a web app or web connectivity, but I don't know how they work as far as a web address is concerned.  Maybe use one of them in conjunction with can3gxw's noip.com suggestion?​

  I'll second LittleITguy​'s Plex suggestion if you're specifically looking for a media server.  If you're looking for a general file server though, then I think ownCloud or Nextcloud are your best bets.

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• Thank you very much for that suggestion, I have been working in WP for years so this is a familiar space and the idea of fancy is cool but I don't understand how you get from A to B.

  So I host and build my websites on Hostinger [they have WP specific hosting] but I am not allowed to store files there. How do I go from there to a local Windows 10 machine?
  

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• TrueNAS. Free, secure and easy to setup.  I have one in my house on an old HP server

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• The question is how secure do you need it to be ? With all the weirdos and hackers wannabe out there, you can be painting a huge target on yourself. Then also the last thing you want is sensitive data leaking or worse people planting weird stuff on your file server ?

  Then there are VMs on AWS [EC2 instances] that can have storage using S3 with server-less web servers [AWS elastic beanstalk]   Then there is also the AWS free tier for test and small set ups. This beats having to host your web server with another win10 machine ?

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• I was going to suggest the same. 

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• Your title and your description defer. According to your title, I understand that you want to keep Windows 10 on your computer and want to repurpose it as a file server located at a hoster of your choice. According to your description in your post, you want to repurpose this computer for file sharing on Internet regardless of location of computer and with whichever operating system seems appropriate. For the variant of your text, I agree with others to consider Nextcloud 9​. And according to description, you don't want to use MFA as the files to share don't need much protection.

  But I didn't understand what the advantage is to use your computer instead of renting a hosting service with the hoster and its better Internet access. I personally prefer to keep such sharing services separate of my own equipment and would rent the Internet service from a qualified hoster. Even if I would create a DMZ on my premises, I would need to open my Internet access more compared to my network without a DMZ.

  • And for my understanding of the variant of your title, are you aware of the limitations of how many concurrent network connections your Windows 10 license supports?
    
  • Remains the number of desired concurrent Internet users always below that threshold?
    

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• If this were Linux, NextCloud is good. On Windows 10, try SynaMan. Both NextCloud and SynaMan will allow you to expose files on a machine through HTTP[S]. Users on the Internet will be able to upload/download files directly to this machine.

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• I am would like to convert a windows 10 computer to a web/browser, self-hosted file server so anyone anywhere can access the files as long as they have: a web address, username and password. I have seen a lot of software solutions that they say can do this but I would like the group's opinion.
  

  Windows 10 has a Hyper-V role built-in which means you can run literally any Linux-based file server for file sharing purposes. Depending on what you need, NextCloud //nextcloud.com/ [Web access], OMV //www.openmediavault.org/ [FTP, Torrent], or SAN&NAS //www.starwindsoftware.com/san-and-nas-free [iSCSI, SMB, NFS] may be the most suitable ones. Since you intend to expose that file server to the internet, running the service inside an isolated virtual machine is even more recommended.

  Curious, why don't you want to use any of the popular public clouds instead?

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• Thank you all for the help, the reason that the client does not want to use a public cloud is 3 fold.

  1] They want to edit the files without having to download them first and needs an easy to use GUI.

  2] The files are confidential and does not want a third party to see them.

  3] They need about 1tb of storage and does not want to pay monthly fees.
  

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• Blade-Runner wrote:

  the reason that the client does not want to use a public cloud is 3 fold.

  These are reasons for a NAS or a solution like NextCloud, without the limitations of Windows 10. So repurposing is fine. But you may move that Windows 10 license to some other device and not reuse it for this repurposing. And for the access from anywhere, you would enable VPN for your network so that remote users may also access such a NAS or NextCloud.

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• I am pretty sure a computer that is capable of running Windows 10 also can easily run a true hypervisor like free Hyper-V Server 2019 //www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-hyper-v-server-2019 or free VMware ESXi [with some limitations //www.vmwareblog.org/esxi-free-buy-esxi-anyway/]. One of these will be a much better option than running virtual machines on top of Windows 10 due to better reliability and less patching required. A desktop OS is not really suitable to become a server.
  

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