Various Ways to Achieve File Sharing

Let’s see the various ways through which we can achieve file sharing in an OS.

1. Server Message Block (SMB)

SMB is like a network based file sharing protocol mainly used in windows operating systems. It allows our computer to share files/printer on a network. SMB is now the standard way for seamless file transfer method and printer sharing.

Example: Imagine in a company where the employees have to share the files on a particular project . Here SMB is employed to share files among all the windows based operating system.orate on projects. SMB/CIFS is employed to share files between Windows-based computers. Users can access shared folders on a server, create, modify, and delete files.

Read more about SMB in the article :

SMB and it’s implementation

2. Network File System (NFS)

NFS is a distributed based file sharing protocol mainly used in Linux/Unix based operating System. It allows a computer to share files over a network as if they were based on local. It provides a efficient way of transfer of files between servers and clients.

Example: Many Programmer/Universities/Research Institution uses Unix/Linux based Operating System. The Institutes puts up a global server datasets using NFS. The Researchers and students can access these shared directories and everyone can collaborate on it.

Read more about NFS in the article:

NFS and it’s architecture

3. File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

It is the most common standard protocol for transferring of the files between a client and a server on a computer network. FTPs supports both uploading and downloading of the files, here we can download,upload and transfer of files from Computer A to Computer B over the internet or between computer systems.

Example: Suppose the developer makes changes on the server. Using the FTP protocol, the developer connects to the server they can update the server with new website content and updates the existing file over there.

Read more about FTP: FTP and it’s implementation

4. Cloud-Based File Sharing

It involves the famous ways of using online services like Google Drive, DropBox , One Drive ,etc. Any user can store files over these cloud services and they can share that with others, and providing access from many users. It includes collaboration in realtime file sharing and version control access.

Ex: Several students working on a project and they can use Google Drive to store and share for that purpose. They can access the files from any computer or mobile devices and they can make changes in realtime and track the changes over there.

These all file sharing methods serves different purpose and needs according to the requirements and flexibility of the users based on the operating system.

File Sharing in an Operating System(OS) denotes how information and files are shared between different users, computers, or devices on a network; and files are units of data that are stored in a computer in the form of documents/images/videos or any others types of information needed.

For Example: Suppose letting your computer talk to another computer and exchange pictures, documents, or any useful data. This is generally useful when one wants to work on a project with others, send files to friends, or simply shift stuff to another device. Our OS provides ways to do this like email attachments, cloud services, etc. to make the sharing process easier and more secure.

Now, file sharing is nothing like a magical bridge between Computer A to Computer B allowing them to swap some files with each other.