How are you sharing files in your company?

[GraphicDisorder]

Each computer has shares, we have a share on the server that we stuff in files that need digitized or sepped.  But for size of files designers keep native files on their rigs, which is copied automatically by the server at night as well as external and internal copys on each computer.  So 3-4 copies of everything here.

[Gilligan]

Yeah, I don't bi-directional sync anything really.

One is the working copy and the other is backup.

[SteveS]

Try Smartsheet with Dropbox.  You can attach files to the job. We use Smartsheet and built a scheduling module around our various areas of production. It works on smartphones and tablets too. It's really a slick solution if you take the time to build your sheets right.

[SteveS]

www.smartsheet.com

[Flash Ink]

We run a WD My Cloud system. The hard drive connects to our router. We keep all of our files there so that anyone with permissions can access that one main spot. Much cheaper option than a server style setup. 4TB is just under $200. Plus using WDs programs you can access your files outside of the shop.

[ericheartsu]

becareful with that mycloud

ours died within 4 months

[ZooCity]

Here's the setup we invested in after looking at a bunch of options:

• Mac Mini running OSX server, internal 1TB drive
• (2) 1TB external Thunderbolt drives, made for rugged transport.
• Backblaze cloud backup

The 1TB in the server is the main drive, one of the thunderbolt externals always hooked up and cloning the main drive with Carbon Copy Cloner. The other external is yesterdays and is offsite. 

If the drive in the server craps the bed we boot from the external clone.  If the whole mini server goes down we have other minis here so we swap one in and boot from external clone.  This solves any server hardware related downtime should the server need repair, we should have near zero downtime to access server files. 

Off site external, is taken either daily or a few times a week, backs up in the case of the shop kerploding or something.

Backblaze is the last backup and actually functions a lot like time machine for all computers in your organization.  It has versioning and you can even access files online.  I think this is huge to have auto versioning on all machines.  You can restore from any time in the last 30days I believe via a download or you can pay them to overnight a thumb drive or a whole hard drive if needed.

None of this is setup yet but will all be tested very soon.    Our IT guy though it was pretty slick overall, we agreed that a big RAID array was not needed for us, our file storage needs are actually very modest considering the number of files here.   One of my 2015 goals is redundancy everywhere so I'm happy that we are finally getting serious about our data storage.  No more godforsaken google drive!

[kingscreen]

We use Dropbox with the Selective Sync feature depending on which machine is tapping it.