NetDisk technology allows you to use disks on a remote PC over the network just as if they were local disks. It differs from NAS, network shares and network drives, as its access is not limited to files and folders and the individual data blocks (sectors) of the remote disks are accessible.
A NetDisk will behave exactly as a locally attached disk would and, as such, it will show available disk information such as name, serial number or type.
These two components provide disk connectivity via the network:
The server component is implemented with the NetDisk Server App. It makes the system's local disks, on which it is started, available over the network.
The (NetDisk) client is the system that connects to the NetDisk server and mounts its disks for quasi-local use. The connection is made via the NetDisk Applet.
First, use the NetDisk-Server App to start the NetDisk server(s) in order to make the disks available in the network. You can select which disks to share from that PC and whether or not to allow write access.
Once the NetDisk server(s) are started, a client PC can connect to the shared disks (NetDisks). Use the NetDisk Applet to establish a connection to the respective NetDisk server. Once the connection is established, the NetDisks shares can be mounted on the client.
The mounted NetDisks can then be used as if they were connected directly to the local PC and are made available in the corresponding apps in the usual selection lists.
Note: a remote disk can be identified as a NetDisk by the '[@]' ahead of its name.
Important: due to the access to the remote volume being the same as the access to a local disk, there is a possibility of a spontaneous disconnect of the network connection. This may result in the file system becoming inconsistent on the remote volume, similar to when a local disk is unplugged without preparation.
Therefore, it is important to always unmount a NetDisk volume once you finish using it on the client PC and prior to terminating the NetDisk server on the remote PC. Unmount the volume with the NetDisk Applet.
In most cases, disk connections via LAN are slower than local disk access. Therefore, NetDisk is mainly intended for use cases in which it is not possible to connect the source and the target disks to a PC at the same time. This includes, in particular, copies to and from disks that cannot be connected directly due to fixed installation in a PC or notebook. However, the NetDisk integration was designed to be freely used for other scenarios as well.
For example, you may perform operations from a client between two NetDisks that are both provided by remote servers, for example to start a copy from A to B from a system C that has mounted NetDisk A and NetDisk B, each from a remote server.
Note: with sufficient modern and fast network technology, the use of NetDisk can in many cases also reach the speed of local disks, for example with 1/2.5/5/10 GBit LAN or via Thunderbolt.