How to logon to work with remote desktop and access files on your "local" hard drive.

Consider this scenario;
Your working remotely and you have a bunch of images or other data on your local PC (i.e. the one you are sitting in front of). You need to move them to your organizations server so you can access them remotely, share them with work colleagues and ensure that they are stored correctly on the organizations server (so they can be backed up and managed by the IT department).

Here are some options:

1. If you can, email them to "yourself" at your work email and then download them on the remote server do that
2. Your work may have a web portal like sharepoint, onedrive professional, Dropbox (or the domestic versions of the same) that might be a good option. It's a few more steps and you end up with multiple copies of the same files all round the internet, server and you local PC but it may be a good option, especially for large files.
3. Depending on the server and how its been setup you may be able to just minimize your connection, copy the files on the local PC, restore the connection back to full screen and then paste the files to the server
4. Another option is to use the functionality in your Microsoft remote desktop connection to transfer them direct from the hard drive of your PC to the remote server following is the brief instruction on how to do that.

Option 4 above has a couple of considerations that are worth mentioning;

• Your remote desktop connection has been setup for "thin client" in that only the screen, keyboard and mouse travel over the link. You may find that if you do a big file transfer it will slow down the connection that your using and possibly impact other users as well depending on the connection speed at the work side.
• Your IT department may have blocked you from doing this for security reasons.

Lastly, before the guide, I just wanted to mention that even if you can do this, consideration should be given to if you should do this. Using the "thin" connection for video, keyboard and mouse your unlikely to transfer a virus from your PC to the office network, once you are transferring "fat" files this increases the chance of a problem also consider IP (intellectual property) protection before you tell your staff how to open an untraceable gateway from their home PC to the organizations server.

The guide to setting up access to your "local" disks.

Right click on your desktop icon (assuming you have one) and chose "edit" [See image below]

Click on the "show Options" button [See image below]

Click on the "local resources" tab and then the "more" button.

Once the "more" box pops up check the option for "drives [See image below]

Click OK when finished

Go back to the general tab and click Save [See image below]

That's it your done.

Close the remote connection and then double click in the usual way to connect

When you logon now you may receive an additional warning, connect anyway [See image below]

Once you are connected you should see all the hard drives from your local computer and should be able to copy and paste between your local computer and the remote one (work). [See image below]

Finally you might have to dig around a bit to find your local files. The default location will be under C:\Users\YourUserName\ then under documents, pictures, desktop etc.

Just remember not to try to copy too much, 20 full sided image should be OK, 2,000 not so much.

[End]

This information has been provided for the benefit of digitalwelcomemat IT customers.
Treat this information as informative only and do not take actions or make decisions on the basis of the information contained here. All IT decisions and actions should be made after consultation with your chosen IT professional taking into account all the of the relevant factors.

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