FileTiger™ can copy and backup files over a network. It isn't necessary to assign or map drive letters to hard drives on PCs across the network; FileTiger can browse to any drive that allows access. To display a network drive, press Open (Control-O), click either of the file icons on the right, scroll down to Network Neighborhood, and click on the plus sign to expand the list, and pick the drive to work on.
If the drive or folder that you need to show to has a password, and you have not already entered the password, then you MUST browse to the drive and enter the password in Network Neighborhood, by choosing File, Open (or Control-O), clicking the folder icon, scrolling down to the Network Neighborhood icon, and browsing to the folder needed, and enter the password when requested. You may enter a network path directly using an UNC path, such as \\TOWER\C\WINDOWS, only if the password has already been entered or is not needed.
There are some things to be aware of when using any backup or file management software across a network, not just in FileTiger:
1) If you delete files from another PC, they will generally NOT go to the Recycle Bin, but will be immediately and permanently deleted.
2) Think before you backup across a network. Backups should be from local PC to network drive, or network drive to local PC, but avoid backups from network drive to network drive that are run from a third PC.
For example, with a three-computer network, with your master data files on PC 1, your secretary working at PC 2, and a SuperFloppy on your PC 3 machine, you may be tempted to tell your secretary to start up FileTiger when finished with a big project, and back up the data files to the SuperFloppy. That's the slow way to back up; the backup should be run from PC 1 or from PC 3, so that either the source drive or the destination drive is local. Working from PC 2 is convenient, and will work, but both drives are out on the network, so the files are going to travel across the cable twice, going from PC 1 to PC 2 to PC 3, and the backup will take twice as long as if done from either of the two local machines.
3) Keep in mind that you must have the correct rights to read and write files across a network; your network supervisor can tell you what you can do, and what you can't. For example, you might have rights to copy a file to your local drive, but not to erase the file on the network server.
When working on files on a machine that is not your own, error messages may occasionally be only partially correct. You may see an error that says that a "file could not be renamed" but the real error is "this user isn't allowed to rename files in this folder".
© 1998-2004 Science Translations Software, All Rights Reserved.