Thursday, June 01, 2006

A Semi-Solution for My Internet Based File System Problem

After thinking about this more today, I have come up with the following solution that will almost work perfectly. First, we have an existing Subversion repository, so I created a "personal/kminnick" project for my own use. Second, we have an existing network drive called the "u" drive which can be used to store personal files. So, I installed a Windows based svn client called Tortoise SVN which is actually a shell extension that integrates directly into Windows Explorer. This basically means I can use Windows explorer to check out / check in files into Subversion, awesome stuff. I checked out my personal project onto our network drive (which is going to be available over a VPN eventually) so that nothing is stored on a local hard disk. To access the files from any location I can use a simple web browser to access the Subversion repository directly. If traveling, I could checkout all the files to my local hard disk, then check them back in whenever I have Internet access. Cool stuff. So with all of this setup and working I can:

1. All of my files are backed up automatically.
2. Have a history of every revision for all of my documents.
3. Access my files from any location that has a web browser.
4. Check out files locally for airplane trips, vacations, etc.

Not a bad solution, it was easy to setup and doesn't require a local hard disk for file storage.