Use windows pc as storage for linux laptop

[Yasin40]

Hi guys

I found an older laptop at home that I want to use for school

The problem with it is that it's very slow (celeron 2840 2gb ram) so I installed Mint on it. 

Another problem is it only has a 30GB non upgradable SSD

I do have a pretty decent Windows desktop at home with about 4.5TB of storage. Could I use that PC  as sort of a remote access server/ cloud for my school laptop? What program could I use for this? The easier to use the better because I'm very new to things like this

Thanks for your answers

[Master Disaster]

You could but you would have to leave the PC running 24/7 and accessing it remotely would be pretty dangerous, if it's open to you it's open to everyone.

 

Just buy a portable USB HDD.

[Yasin40]

Just now, Master Disaster said:

You could but you would have to leave the PC running 24/7 and accessing it remotely would be pretty dangerous, if it's open to you it's open to everyone.

 

Just buy a portable USB HDD.

Couldn't I just leave it in some state of slumber with just the ssd turned on or something? 

[Master Disaster]

1 minute ago, Yasin40 said:

Couldn't I just leave it in some state of slumber with just the ssd turned on or something? 

Nope, it would technically be acting as a fileserver which needs processing power.

[FlappyBoobs]

Why would you want to do that when there are tons of cloud storage solutions available, some for free, that will do what you need it to do better than your homebrew solution ever could. 

[Yasin40]

6 hours ago, FlappyBoobs said:

Why would you want to do that when there are tons of cloud storage solutions available, some for free, that will do what you need it to do better than your homebrew solution ever could. 

Because I like trying things out whether they're actually useful or not

Just seemed like a fun thing to try haha

[FlappyBoobs]

16 minutes ago, Yasin40 said:

Because I like trying things out whether they're actually useful or not

Just seemed like a fun thing to try haha

That's the best reason to do things! I thought this was for a project that would require reliability and high speed (over 100mb/sec download), but as a curiosity project I'm all for it. 

 

I would try setting up a VPN on your home machine (seperate machine if you have it) and then you can connect to your local network as if you were at home. Then it's just a case of accessing your files over the network as you would normally. So a mapped drive for the folders you access the most and simple file shares for everything else. 

 

The benefit of this approach is that when you are home you just use the mapped drives as normal, no need for the VPN first, meaning that once you get used to it you seemless transition between home use and out of the house use. 

[Donut417]

On 9/3/2019 at 3:44 AM, Yasin40 said:

Hi guys

I found an older laptop at home that I want to use for school

The problem with it is that it's very slow (celeron 2840 2gb ram) so I installed Mint on it. 

Another problem is it only has a 30GB non upgradable SSD

I do have a pretty decent Windows desktop at home with about 4.5TB of storage. Could I use that PC  as sort of a remote access server/ cloud for my school laptop? What program could I use for this? The easier to use the better because I'm very new to things like this

Thanks for your answers

Yes you could. How to do it is a little outside the wheel house. BUT you will want to setup a VPN between the two machines. A VPN will create a secure tunnel between the machines making it a secure connection. Just keep in mind that speeds will be limited. As most peoples upload rates are slow. So dont expect ultra fast file transfers. 

 

Id say buying a USB storage drive would be faster and over all more secure and less work.