There are many services out there that allow you a remote drive that you can store your important files and other data, but you have to pay monthly fees for these services and you are limited as to how much data you can transfer and store. The more you store, the more you typically pay.

In this tutorial, we will show you how to use TZO along with a few other freeware applications to map a drive that YOU control, such as a folder on your desktop computer. You can also use this application with a NAS drive. Most NAS devices have an FTP server included and this can be used instead of the filezilla application shown below.

* If you are using a NAS drive such as the Linksys NAS200, Synology, Infrant and others you have an FTP server already integrated into the NAS. Follow the directions that are provided with your NAS to setup the FTP server and add accounts. Once you do this, skip the FTP setup section in this tutorial and follow the directions for installing and configuring TZO (TZO can also be used in your router or NAS device if it supports TZO) and FTPDrive.

SERVER SETUP - Step 1) The first part of this tutorial will be to setup your server with a static LAN IP address. Follow this tutorial for setting a static LAN IP address on your Windows XP machine. If you are using a NAS, follow the directions on setting a static LAN IP on your NAS. If you are running a Linksys Router, typically the DHCP range is at 192.168.1.100 through 192.168.1.150 - so we want to set the static IP address to 192.168.1.200


SERVER SETUP - Step 2) You now need to download and setup the FTP Server.
Download the FILEZILLA SERVER from the FileZilla site at Sourceforge. Make sure you download the Win32 version. Set the FileZilla server up on your system using the defaults. As soon as you finish the install, the server will run automatically. Once the server starts you will see a screenshot similar to the one shown below. Click OK to connect to the server to administer the server and add accounts






SERVER SETUP - Step 3) You now need to configure the FileZilla FTP Server. Once you see the main FileZilla screen, click EDIT, USERS as shown in the screenshot shown below:





SERVER SETUP - Step 4) You now need to add a user to the FileZilla FTP Server. Once you see screenshot as shown below, click the ADD Button as shown circled in red




SERVER SETUP - Step 5) Add a user to the FileZilla FTP Server. Once you see screenshot as shown below, type in the name of the user you wish to add. This will be the username of the individual that will be using the FTP server. In our example, bob will be our user remotely mapping the drive over the Internet. Once you are done typing in the username, click OK



SERVER SETUP - Step 6) Add a user to the FileZilla FTP Server. Now that we have added the user bob, we now need to configure the password and home directory for that user. Before we exit the username dialog, make sure you enable a password as shown circled in red in the screenshot shown below. Once you are done typing in the password, write down the username and password for later use when we setup our FTPDrive software.

SERVER SETUP - Step 7) Add a home directory to the FileZilla FTP Server. Now that we set the password for the user, we have one last step to configure the directory where the FTP server will store the files. As shown circled in red below, click on the SHARED FOLDERS and you will see a screenshot similar to the one shown below. We will now click the ADD BUTTON under the shared folders section to add a directory for bob.

SERVER SETUP - Step 8) Add a home directory to the FileZilla FTP Server. Once you click the ADD button to add a directory, your Windows File Explorer screen will pop up asking what directory to add. Since our server has mutiple disk drives, we wanted to use a drive with the most available space, so we selected drive D on our system. We then created a directory on D called FTP FOLDER at d:\FTP Server. We will select that directory as the home directory for the user bob as shown below and then click OK.

SERVER SETUP - Step 9) Set permissions on the directory we added to the FileZilla FTP Server
Once you set the directory as shown above in step 10, you need to set the proper permissions to allow bob to create and write files and directories. Make sure that D:\FTP FOLDER is the directory highlighted as shown below, and then make sure that READ, WRITE, DELETE are checked ON. You also need to make sure CREATE, DELETE, LIST and +SUBDIRS are all enabled as shown below. Then Click OK in the bottom left corner to finish adding the permissions.

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE to page 2 of the tutorial - Configuring Router, DDNS and FTPDrive