New
#1
Networking to a storgae device in a mixed win7 and 10 LAN
I run a household of 3PC's - a desktop and 2 laptops - all using win7. The PC's connect to a LAN, and thru the LAN to the internet modem. Also attached to the LAN are 3 NAS devices, holding off-PC backups and a public media drive which I use to store media (video/photos/music) useful to all PC's and to transfer files between PC's. The main desktop is the youngest and only one worth the effort of upgrade to win 10 - or so I thought.
Currently, I've reeled back to win7 on the desktop after 2 aborted attempts to upgrade to win10 v1909, each one failing for different reasons; not the upgrade itself, but what win10 itself does to the apps and connectivity. And the likely killer in this effort is networking to the LAN NAS devices. I've read the 32 page networking tutorial, and frankly none of the options seem to fit what I do. And in passing I note that win10 has many if not most of the security challenges that caused the user revolt with Vista, now vanished from the windows horizon.
So I thought I would set out what I do, and ask what the closest approximation under win10 is - if there is one.
First - operating idea
No direct file sharing between PC's - they are on or off as they need to be. Sharing is by copying a file to a folder on the Public NAS. Access to a shared file stored that way, or any of the backup files on the other NAS is simply just click/copy/paste.
Second - a win 7 explorer screenshot summarizing what I do
- map a network drive to the NAS, so it appears in the explorer pane when open (in all 3 PC's) - starting at the end of the alphabet for drive descriptors (X,Y and Z).
This image shows the local drive structure (part) and the NAS as they appear in explorer. I've marked it up to show the process - click on source folder, copy, paste to the target folder. Also shown are the backup files: taken per drive in 25gb compressed lots, total around 460+Gb per cycle now - the copy takes over an hour on a 1gbps LAN connection. No way is that going to be possible using Onedrive with the poor internet performance locally, even if I desired to have all that floating around in the cloud somewhere. Which I don't.
So, how can I set up windows 10 on the desktop to mimic this? Without changing the ability to access those NAS devices from other win7 PC's as they now do??