Cloud/Online and/or LAN file storage for Foxpro data

[dmusicant]

I have a couple of VFP apps that access, store and change data on a regular basis and I do this from 3 different Windows machines on my LAN. I currently have the data centrally stored on a server machine. I've been having some issues including suspect HD's, failing HD's, primitive and irregular backup methodologies, sometimes slow or otherwise unreliable data access, and lately a couple of inexplicable Memo file missing or invalid events that had me restoring backups and scrambling to find or somehow replicate missing records.

I'm thinking of two things, one being to either buy a NAS of some kind (determining just what to buy is a daunting process for me, something I guess I can do, but it's going to take a bunch of research, which I've started... barely!), buy or build a server machine superior to what I've been doing (having a 2TB USB HD attached to a spare laptop, and subsequently the same HD attached to my recently acquired Asus RT-N66U router, which may be the source of the file corruption problem, so I've moved the HD back to being attached to the laptop). The other idea is to keep my data (probably with occasional backups on my end) in some kind of online storage, such as Dropbox or Google Cloud or some other. Hopefully, I could access, add to and modify online Foxpro tables from any of my local machines in real time without difficulties (?).

The amount of data I'm talking about is:

App 1: ~200MB
App 2: ~750MB

These include FTP's and TBK's

This is the data that is most precious to me!

On occasion I take one of my laptops with me and want to access this data. My solution for this so far is to copy fresh data to the laptop before leaving the house and have the apps use that (I often take it to places where I don't have wifi anyway, but sometimes to places where I do have wifi).

I have a Dropbox account, but so far I've only used it to give access by groups of people to some media. I've read some reviews of a few NAS's at Amazon, mostly Synology. I figure mirrored RAID would be a good idea if I'm going to do it all locally, as well as off site storage on portable HD's.

What are people's experience with these issues? Can I get recommendations, caveats, etc.?

 

[mjcmkrsr]

Hi dMusicant,
Glad to read that you got it working. Before diving into the clouds, please do also consider that DS214... is able to act as a (S)FTP(S) and as a (S)WebDav server.
Have fun
MK

 

[dmusicant]

My Foxpro seems OK so far, but I'm having some problems. Besides not being able to log into DS Audio with my Windows Phone, another issue of more concern has developed. I'll paste below my as-yet-unanswered post at the Synology Forums File Station subforum:


Moved folder with 100's of files but only 1 file now exists

Posted Wed Aug 13, 2014 6:48 am

Newly setup DS214play, I copied a folder with hundreds of MP3 files (between 60MB and 175MB, mostly) from a USB HD to the NAS, which has mirrored WD Red 3TB HDs. Then, I decided to move that folder under the \music folder of the NAS. Don't know for a fact but I figure that some of the Synology apps require that. Firstly, I started doing this using Windows Explorer, but instead of the fairly quick movement (file allocation table adjustments), it appeared that the action was from one volume to another (a copy/paste followed by a delete). It said it was going to take over 3 hours. I stopped the action, leaving 99+% of the files and the folder where it was on the NAS.

Next day (today, a few minutes ago), I went into Synology's File Station and attempted the same thing. It appeared quite simple, it seemed to happen instantaneously. The folder was now under \music (the music folder generated when Media Server was installed). However, only one of the many hundreds of MP3 files, and none of the subdirectories is shown to be in the folder. What happened to all of the other data/files? How can I fix this? This is insanity! I still have almost all of the files on the USB HD, but I figure I shouldn't need to resort to copying them all to the NAS a 2nd time! Thanks for help!

 

[mjcmkrsr]

Hi,

/music is one of DS system shard folders. Do you have the appropriate rights (R/W)?
Check under
Control Panel - Shared Folders - /music - Edit - Permissions
and
Control Panel - Users - TheNameYouUse - Permissions

You may also want to map /music as a network drive e.g. M: - this will allow you to use Explorer (or whichever you use) to navigate though it.

Please do also check my answer on the Synology forum

hth

MK

 

[dmusicant]

Thank you, MK. I just checked my permissions and added R/W for the admin account, the only one so far. This to the music folder. All this hardly explains where all the data went, over 166GB flat out disappeared. Luckily, the source for that data still exists (the USB HD where it came from) and I can recopy, but my confidence is shaken.

Did you post a reply in the Synology Forum? I don't see it in the thread linked here in my last post.