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Before I start, no, I don't want to clone/move files from one SSD to another.

I have two laptops, a Surface Pro 7+ with 16 GB RAM and 256 GB SSD, and a Lenovo 300e with 4 GB RAM and 256 GB SSD.

My Surface's storage has filled up super quickly (mostly due to WSL partitions), and I am hoping I can do some setup on the Lenovo 300e to use it as another disk linked through the Internet or any other way.

How can I do so?

TL;DR: How can I link a storage device from another laptop to the current one without physically attaching it?

Peter Mortensen
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NSPC 911
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5 Answers5

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In theory it is possible – but, of course, the Lenovo 300e must remain powered on (and connected to the network) the entire time you're using its disk. That might not do any good for its battery. Also, the "server" laptop really should be connected via Ethernet as well, because data transfer between two Wi-Fi devices on the same channel can only give half the performance at best.

The built-in option is Windows "file sharing" using the SMBv3 protocol. On the "server" laptop you'll need to allow the "File Sharing" ports through Windows Firewall ("SMB-In" in wf.msc) and to share the actual folder or entire disk (right-click → Properties → Sharing, or alternatively fsmgmt.msc).

Then on the "client" laptop access it through \\ip_address\share_name, e.g. \\lenovo.local\DiskC – or use "Files → Computer → Map Network Drive" (net use) to assign a drive letter. Programs will see it as a "Network" drive.

(SMB uses Windows accounts and passwords, so the Lenovo should have a "local" non-Microsoft account and with a password set.)

There are a few other options, but they all generally require either Windows Server or Linux or commercial software. For example, Windows 10 can act as an iSCSI client ("initiator") to make a remote disk look almost exactly like a local disk – that is, much more "disk-like" than SMB – but only Windows Server (or Linux, etc) can act as an iSCSI server ("target").

A disadvantage iSCSI is that because it shares the raw disk, it cannot share a disk that's already in-use by the server's OS (it could probably share a VHD though), and likewise only a single client can connect to the disk at a time – unlike SMB, which is file-based and can share any individual folder with any number of clients.

grawity
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Grawity's answer is 100% correct. This answer is a different interpretation of the question.

Your question almost implies you are wanting to repurpose your old Lenovo 300e as Network Attached Storage which is accessible on your Surface. If you no longer intend to use it for anything other then extra storage you may want to consider turning it into a dedicated NAS.

There are a few ways to do this. Most often NAS's are built on top of Linux (or another Unix variant) - and there are a number of NAS distributions you can load onto a USB and then install on your Lenovo. These will generally use less resources and perform faster and provide more flexibility then doing this under Windows.

Some popular free NAS distributions include FreeNAS (Now TrueNAS Core) and Open Media Vault - of these I expect Open Media Vault is going to work better due to its lower memory requirements (I've not looked in to much depth but FreeNAS uses the more advanced ZFS filesystem which is arguably to complex to run well on your Lenovo).

Also look at Amahi, Turnkey File Server and maybe EasyNAS

Giacomo1968
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davidgo
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If 250 GB have filled up quickly, then so will 500 GB

I would recommend that you get an external SSD drive if you can’t fit a second internal one.

A 1 TB drive or a 2 TB drive should be affordable, and an external SSD drive connected through USB-C or even USB 3.0 should be much faster than a connection to another computer.

Giacomo1968
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gnasher729
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There are also "wireless SSDs" (I guess the power line is excepted from "wireless") you might consider. Or try investing in some NAS (network-attached storage). That way both computers could operate independently from each other.

For "real use" today 256 GB is not much storage; it's the amount my mid-class smartphone has. As a matter of fact I had replaced the 1TB SSD in my Lenovo with two 2 TB SSDs (used as RAID 1); that should give me peace of mind for some time.

Peter Mortensen
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U. Windl
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There's already an answer to enable file sharing, but I wanted to mention Administrative Shares. Your drives are already shared on the network. I've used this before to migrate data between laptops.

You can list these shares by executing net share in PowerShell or Command Prompt:

PS C:\Users\alice> net share

Share name   Resource                        Remark


C$           C:\                             Default share
E$           E:\                             Default share
IPC$                                         Remote IPC
print$       C:\WINDOWS\system32\spool\drivers
                                             Printer Drivers
ADMIN$       C:\WINDOWS                      Remote Admin
The command completed successfully.

If, for instance, E: is the drive you want to access remotely, you can navigate to \\[Computername]\E$ on your other device.

For easy access, you can create a shortcut to \\[Computername]\E$.

user2240373
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