remote access PC from mac...

[drcory]

looking for a way to have my office PC share a drive with my home mac securely. i plan to backup my mac via internet (chronosync) to my office PC (external usb drive).

what is the best/easiest way to do this? VPN? hamachi?

any ideas or solutions would be appreciated.

 

[drcory]

any ideas at all guys?

 

[Komiksulo]

I installed Windows XP on a separate Boot Camp partition and when I want to connect to my work PC, I boot it inside a VMWare virtual machine.

From XP, I use Internet Explorer to connect to my work's secure website and download their VPN connection client. After it connects, I use the Microsoft Remote Desktop client to get to my work PC, also running XP.

If my work allowed the use of the Cisco VPN client, as it formerly did, I could use the OS X version of the connection client and the OS X version of the Microsoft Remote Desktop client to connect. But they don't. 🙁

However, once the Remote Desktop connection is made, I can make drives of my home computer available to the remote computer. This is enabled in the connection settings of the Remote Desktop client. When they're present, they show up in the folders list in Windows Explorer as "<drive name> on <local computer name>".

 

[Komiksulo]

Hmm. On rereading the OP, I see that's not quite what was being asked. Sorry. I think it would have a lot to do with the particular security and IT policies of the workplace in question. I'm certain that if I started running a server on the internal network, for example, IT would notice and come running.

What you need is a way to reach out from the work PC and connect to a server already running on the home PC. This would require being able to locate the home PC on your ISP's network, which many ISPs make difficult. I believe there are intermediate servers to which both home and work PCs can connect.