I've recently built myself a home server running Windows 8, and i'm looking to replicate all the functionality my old Synology NAS had.

I'm looking for a way to access the files stored on the device over the internet - I'm looking more towards remote file administration (renaming files etc) than anything else

I already have some files backed up online but were talking movies etc where that isn't practical.

I know remote desktop can do this (and I've already got this set up), but my home upload connection isn't the fastest which makes it a bit choppy to use.

Ideas?

Welcome to win 8, remote with 8 is a known issue, well, known by many, just not microsoft. specificity, try turning off network printers, drop IPv6 support, hyperV, use either net, not wireless for the 8 box, turn off wireless services.
This probably won't work but at least you'll feel you've tried !

It's why when you need remote in a business, stick with 7. Never pays to adopt a MS operating system till after SP1 at the earliest

Try 8.1, all my info is pre patch.

Erm, what? I'm perfectly happy with Windows 8 (for some of my devices)

Win 8 is ok for playing at home, it doesn't like remote access at all.
It doesn't seem to matter which client you use, they all frequently have issues.

A cloud option till MS sort this, which may have happened in 8.1 is your best choice.

Or, run a Linux box as your NAS/Server, and just connect to that.

Edit: try turning off windows location provider under control panel, program's, turn off windows features.
That seems to have worked for a number of people.

vpn

With any real OS, thats obvious.
See my earlier comments about VPN and Win 8.

Can you just run your NAS till MS actually sort this issue out ? Or, use 7, XP, NT, or any other OS that actually supports VPN's ?.

If you run a Virtual machine on your 8 box, that should work ok. Defeats the reason to run MS's wonderful OS but it will actually work. Who know's what their doing but 8 is well worth avoiding in any business sense till they get the basic's to work.
Looks pretty tho............, and thats all the unwashed masses want.

I'd use Debian and ZFS for your NAS personally. And then you can just access the samba shares remotely via an SSH tunnel. Works out for me, anyhow. It's just terribly slow because I'm using two 40GB IDE drives in RAID1 on a 1.4GHz celeron with 1GB of RAM, and the server is currently running over a wireless bridge because I'm too lazy to run cables. But eventually I'm planning on building something fancy with SAS drives, striped across multiple raidz2 vdevs that will cost me quite a lot of money.

But yeah, it's pretty easy to access samba shares over SSH tunnel with Putty (well, I only did it on XP SP3). You have to add a loopback device, set the IP to 10.0.0.1, and the gateway to your actual gateway. Then in Putty you have to set up a tunnel that maps 10.0.0.1 to 127.0.0.1 on the remote server on port 139, if I recall correctly. May have had to restart and disable file sharing on the client computer, because 10.0.0.1 ends up being a loopback address of the client or something. It definitely worked though, just slowly.

I don't really understand what is the problem. You don't have public IP address? I guess all you need is to set up an FTP server. Or you don't want FTP and you want SMB?

I have a public IP address. FTP is an option, but I thought (wrongly?) FTP was a bit antiquated.

It is, but if, when you try to use any VPN software, including Remote Desktop, you find it's always dropping the connection then you've found the Win 8 glitch.

It isn't your Internet connection.

FTP may be a viable choice, so is building a NAS using any other OS. Any older box will do if you go the Linux route.

Remote desktop works fine over LAN, but over the internet its a little slow (but doesnt drop or anything). My home upload is only 60 KB/s so it's to be expected.

I want to use Window as I want just 1 PC on all the time, and I'd like to run Windows apps as well (i.e. my cloud backup provider, XBMC etc), and I'm just not that keen on Linux...

EDIT - Also I've tried a "traditional" NAS (Synology unit) but while it did lots of stuff it wasn't really fast enough, my Microserver is brilliant in this respect it's just not as "polished"

Cool, then if Remote Desktop, or any VPN software works then use that. VPN will work on dialup, sad but a requirement in my parts.
If all you need is that then speed is irrelevant to rename files etc.

If you need more than that then specify your requirements.

What's wrong with the "antiquated" FTP if it does work?






　

Because in Windows, you can't use FTP as a true mount point. With stuff like SMB and AFP, they're geared towards being used as "yet another hard drive" and the protocols are written with that in mind as well. FTP is geared towards "Get large amount of data to other place".

well I would try this, but I have no idea if it would work: allow TCP ports 137,138,139,445 to your PC (so they're accessible from outside). On a remote pc, try to open \\your_ip\dir or mount remote hard drive \\your_ip\dir