At times, when I’m at work there will be situations when I have to transfer files from my PC / Laptop to a remote computer, which is a Windows 2008 server. There are a couple of ways to do it. My office computer has Windows XP installed and my laptop has Windows Vista installed, so I’ll explain the procedure for both (actually, their is no difference 🙂 ).
First let’s start with, different ways through which we can upload / transfer / copy files from local desktop computer to a remote computer which has windows server (windows 2008 in my case) installed on it.
1> Using an FTP program to transfer the files is the easiest and recommended. Get the public IP of a common server, use a free FTP software like CoreFTP or FileZilla and upload / transfer the files on to the common server. These files will be later downloaded on to the remote machine.
Connect to the remote machine using Remote Desktop Connection (procedure explained below), launch the FTP software, log on to the common server where you have uploaded the files and download the files on to the remote machine.
One of the common problems here is, the admin normally would not have instlled FTP software, and if you are not the admin, then you will not have rights to installe FTP software, in such case you can use the command line FTP facility to download / upload files on Remote machine.
This tutorial will help you use FTP service using Command line. FTP route is recommended if you have to transfer big / large chunk of files as it is very quick when compared to the second option.
2> If you are not comfortable using Command line FTP and if there is no FTP software instlled on your Windows Server, then you can use Advanced Remote Desktop Connection feature to transfer files to and from remote machine.
With the advanced feature you can share your local computer drives with the remote machine, as though they are a part of the remote machine. So you can copy / paste the content from one drive to another, as you’d do on your local system.
Advanced Remote Desktop Connection On Windows XP / Windows Vista :
1> Click on Start –> Programs –> Accessories –> Remote Desktop Connection. Alternatively you can Click on Start –> Run –> and type mstsc.
2> Click on Options
3> Go To Local Resources tab, click the More button
4> Select all the drives you want to share and click OK and click on connect. You’ll get a warning message asking if you trust the remote source. If you do then click OK and you’ll be logged into the remote machine.
If you go to the My Computer in remote machine you’ll see drives from your system listed there along with the remote machines local drives.
Note: Only administrators will be allowed to share drives. If you are not the admin, then you should use FTP service to transfer files (which is much faster and easier to use).