Setup an old computer as a NAS to share files online

[Philip Kapadia]

Hi all! It's my first post on this forum. I thought this might be a great topic to start with

 

I'm a film editor, I send many many videos on a daily basis. Things like exports, rushes, VFX pre comps etc.

I need a fast way to send these videos to my clients as links in emails. Traditional cloud storage doesn't work for me, because I don't have time to wait for the files to upload (sometimes 100GB in size) to share a link. I need a way for files to be uploaded on demand once a client hits "download". The best solution for this would be something like a QNAP or WD NAS. Unfortunately, the good ones are expensive.. so...

 

What's the best way to host large files online with an old windows machine? At the moment I use a service called Diode Drive which I'm constantly getting frustrated with. It has an ugly user interface on the clients side, I have to remote into the system to share my link, and it's buggy. What are the alternatives? 

 

Specs of the machine i'm thinking to leave running 24/7 to host these files:

 

Intel core i3 w Intergrated graphics

6GB RAM

SSD  

WINDOWS OS. 

My internet upload speed is 20MBPS, which I know isn't terribly fast, but I can't help that at the moment. 

 

Thanks in advance!

[10leej]

Does it have to be windows? Because I use Nextcloud exactly for this kind of thing.

[Philip Kapadia]

24 minutes ago, 10leej said:

Does it have to be windows? Because I use Nextcloud exactly for this kind of thing.

Yeah, it does. I'm not really comfortable setting up Linux. I don't really know anything about it and I don't have the time to learn at the moment. 

[Master Disaster]

17 minutes ago, Philip Kapadia said:

Yeah, it does. I'm not really comfortable setting up Linux. I don't really know anything about it and I don't have the time to learn at the moment. 

You can totally run a NextCloud instance on Windows, just grab and install XAMPP, follow NCs installation guide and forward ports 80 & 443 in your router.

[Philip Kapadia]

43 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

You can totally run a NextCloud instance on Windows, just grab and install XAMPP, follow NCs installation guide and forward ports 80 & 443 in your router.

God, i'm scared already.. What is port forwarding OwO. 

I don't have that sort of knowlegde, I want to avoid a command terminal if possible. 

 

[jwwagner25]

1 hour ago, Philip Kapadia said:

God, i'm scared already.. What is port forwarding OwO. 

I don't have that sort of knowlegde, I want to avoid a command terminal if possible. 

 

if you know what "

Things like exports, rushes, VFX pre comps etc."

are, i'm sure you can get a grip on port fowarding! will take no more than a few minutes with the help of google. i have faith in you. 

[Philip Kapadia]

1 hour ago, jwwagner25 said:

if you know what "

Things like exports, rushes, VFX pre comps etc."

are, i'm sure you can get a grip on port fowarding! will take no more than a few minutes with the help of google. i have faith in you. 

I think NextCloud is the best option, but it's so complicated to setup on windows. Port forwarding seems to be the easy bit. so many command terminals, commands, etc etc etc. I'm not sure. 

 

thank you, by the way. 

[Philip Kapadia]

Thank you all for your suggestions. 

 

I decided to stay with Diode Drive, despite the drawbacks. Here is a file hosted from my Windows 10 Server: https://drive-y3tlkx58x87nlvg17tuj.diode.link/prlnl2taiv7m8utl

 

Thanks for the informative response

[10leej]

On 10/2/2021 at 9:56 AM, Philip Kapadia said:

I think NextCloud is the best option, but it's so complicated to setup on windows. Port forwarding seems to be the easy bit. so many command terminals, commands, etc etc etc. I'm not sure. 

 

thank you, by the way. 

That's why I asked about linux. It's actually not that hard to get Nextcloud up and running in a docker container.