Remote access to your files and folders over the Internet is one of the huge advantages to having a Windows Home Server. Lets take a closer look at how to go about it. This article assumes that you have already set up your Windows Home Server for remote access over the web and configured a custom domain name.

Browse to your home server website URL. A note on browsers: You can use Firefox or Chrome to log in, but (and I can hardly believe I’m saying this) you’re likely to have best results with IE. As a matter of fact, the Computer tab, which allows you to connect remotely to individual PCs on your network (if they are running a supported OS) is not even available in Chrome and Firefox.

Type in your username and password and click Log On.

Once you are logged in you’ll see tabs and link to your shared folder. You’ll notice in the example below that there is no Computers tab. I used Google Chrome browser for this example and, as I mentioned earlier, the Computer tab isn’t available in browsers other than IE

Now, to access your folder, click on either the Shared folder tab or the Shared Folders link.

You’ll see all of your available shared folders through the web-based interface. Click on one your shared folders to access the files.

From within a folder you can create sub-folder, delete or rename a file, upload a file or download a file. To upload a file, click on the “up” arrow button.

Click on Choose File to browse for the file you wish to upload.

Click Upload when ready to upload and save the files to the Windows Home Server. Note that if you want to overwrite and existing file, click the Overwrite existing files checkbox.

To download file, simply click on the title of the file, or select its corresponding check box and click the download (down arrow) button. The checkbox method is ideal if you wish to download multiple files at once.

It’s not quite as wonderful as a typical client / server situation where you can simple save to the folder on the server like you can at home as opposed to having to save locally and the upload, but it still gives you the ability to access your files remotely without too much trouble. Just being able to have the access is sweet!