[SOLVED] Connecting to a drive remotely from another machine? (covid situation)

[ShlomiU]

Hello good people.
This is the situation , I am working at a factory and our engineers are working through a shared drive from the main engineer's PC.
We all connect to the same network so it was easy enough to create the drive access using his computer's IP.

Now , the secondary engineer unfortunately needs to go under quarantine due to COVID infection suspicion, but he still needs to work from his home.

What we're going to do is transport his work computer to his house so he could work with his tools , but one issue remains, the drive access.

If we don't establish a connection between the 2 machines than this will cause issues down the line because the engineers will have to re sync their entire work content.

My question is this: Is it possible for the secondary engineer to access the main engineer drive even when they're on separate networks?

We can't use tools like team viewer and other remote support programs because this is an inconvenient and laggy way and he won't have anywhere to access anyways because his work PC will be in his house.

Any help will be much appreciated.

 

[Ralston18]

Remote Desktop:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4028379/windows-10-how-to-use-remote-desktop

First establish the specific requirements; e.g., where the drive is located on the network and what computer(s) on that network do have or will have access to the drive.

Second, plan out, step by step how to configure his PC (to be used at home) to remote into the company network and access an applicable computer.

Third, set it all up at the factory site to test before taking the PC to the Secondary Engineer's home.

Ensuring/knowing that the Remote Desktop works before deploying the computer will make it easier to troubleshoot problems after deployment.

 

[hang-the-9]

You may want to have your IT people look over that setup, running off a shared personal PC drive for access to other users is a very poor solution. Plus how is this getting backed-up? The correct way to do this is through a shared network drive stored in the company building in the server / network rack that the users access over the network, that drive is then backed up nightly to another drive.

 

[Alabalcho]

Install a VPN server at the factory (check with your IT how to do it securely). Once remote PC connects thru the VPN, there will be no difference (apart from speed) in workflow.

But if your workflow involves opening and closing gigabyte files, remote desktop (as proposed above), or local caching with remote sync once a day may be better solution.