Moving to a new drive

Client Manager
1

I am looking to move working files to a NAS, offloading from my computer system. However, there are some issues with items moving.

So, I will be moving files to so that the drive letter and path will be different. I am certain that I will not be the only person experiencing this transition.

Questions:

  • Will I be breaking the link between the TaxCycle files and the DocCycle files?
  • If I break the link, can I re-establish the link fairly easily and, if so, how?
  • Any issues with the Client Manager running on a NAS? Specifically WD My Cloud EX4100?

(If I can’t, I will have to see about scheduling a backup job to copy the files over frequently. But I would prefer to work with the files on the NAS as the NAS drives are RAID 10 redundant and my computer is getting old.)

2

@TimParris

My desktop is old. It is Dual Quad Core from March 2010. I have babied it along by significantly increasing RAM to 24 GB and my hard drives are Western Digital Black Drives in RAID 1 Mirrored with SCSI with a second set of RAID 1 mirrored internal drives with data only. As well I have two sets of Western Digital MyBook Drives with data only. For a low cost I can have tons of redundancy and plug and play access to my data for a relatively low cost.

Western Digital has replaced the Black Drives with Gold Drives.

Beware that some drives are not RAID compatible.

I have a backup computer to which I attach my portable external MyBook Drives with the data backed up. I use this computer when I take my PC in for physical upgrades.

I replace the power supply every three to four years. I have dual everything - DVD drives, graphics cards, network ports, tons of USB ports.

This really helps with migration.

I am ex-IBM and supported accounting systems migrations for 22 years in high production environments for banking, investment, insurance, government and other raised floor environments. Since moving to tax accounting and bookkeeping it has been a bit of steep learning curve to keep up with changes in technology without my tech team or my former tech buddies in Toronto.

I use Geeks on the Way for remote monitoring and support on a very affordable monthly service plan. This fixed cost price works much better than the vagaries of hourly billing with one person on site tech support. They support North America and have physical support personnel in many major cities. When I need onsite support I pay the very reasonable hourly rate to get a fantastic tech.

http://www.geeksontheway.com/

If and when I physical upgrades in Calgary, I use Memory Express with their bench rates. I need to allow one to two weeks for some service procedures. Usually it takes three to five days since I have a hardware RAID configuration with SCSI connections which not all techs can support. I also need to allow time for special orders to come in. I take the hour year warranty so minimal costs. The bench rates are $50/hr with a fixed time component so a total new install is $150 for a job which may take 4 to 6 hours to complete.

While my Memory Express guys love NAS drives they use it mostly for home entertainment.

My Geeks on the Way (owned by the TURSA Group) guys warn against using NAS as your only backup since you can not access the data directly from your Windows PC OS as you can with a RAID configured Western Digital Drive.

You can set-up a small network using a high speed cable modem and a passive Router to share external drives as attachments between two PC’s. I have been using my 12 port D-Link router since 2008. I have two PC’s and can move my external drives between my two PC’s. I just need to change the file path. I don’t have DoxCycle linked.

If you do go ahead with the NAS drive, then I would use an external set of drives without an OS so that I could easily migrate between systems while you get your apps configured and your files set-up. It can take a while to work out the kinks.

Personally I hate doing this in Jan to May. If at all possible I like to do this in June to August. That said I had to switch systems in February or March three times during the past 21 years. That’s why I have so much redundancy. In an ideal world you would have three systems - Production, Hot Backup (mirrored system), and test. In my mainframe and server days we had two more sets - development and test. But then budgets were very big.

I know that several offices are using MS 365 with MS OneNote to SharePoint pass through. I have no experience with this but have thought that this may be a good alternative for anywhere, anytime, from any device data access. However, I would not be testing this except during off season.

My suggestion would be to add external backup drives for added options for data access while you noodle through your configurations and installations.

Good luck with your migration.

3

I am accessing all of my data from a Synology Diskstation NAS. We have also installed and are running some some lower resource consuming applications directly from the Diskstation as well. I call it our “personal cloud” because I have located it way up in the suspended ceiling. :slight_smile:

All of our Taxbyte, Profile, and TaxCycle data files are on the NAS and can be easily opened directly or accessed as if they were on the local machine. Same goes for word processing and spreadsheet files.

I have run the TaxCycle Client Manager directly from the NAS, and it worked fine, but it was not maintenance free, so I have the Client Manger running from my desktop. The issue for me was, every time that TaxCycle updated, the Client Manager seemed to get locked out of the NAS. I think I have a topic or two in this discussion forum about that. In any event, what was less maintenance for me was to move and run Client Manager directly from the local machine instead of the NAS. I will try to find links to that discussion.

My TaxCycle client files are accessed directly from the NAS and I can’t notice any difference or reduction in speed. You can’t tell the files aren’t stored locally.

Even though they say it can’t really be done I have QuickBooks client files running directly from the NAS without the Quickbooks File Manager installed on any machine. QB will not install or restore a client file directly to the NAS, so I install or restore the client file into a folder on my desktop, then copy that to the NAS, and delete the local files. QB takes a little longer to initially load if the client files are on the NAS, but other than that, you can’t notice any difference.

I used Windows to map the Synology NAS as Drive Z on all of my desktop and laptop computers. It shows up as a Network Location (Drive Z) if I look at My computer or This PC in Windows 10.

I don’t use DoxCycle so I can’t comment on the links but presumably that shouldn’t be much of a problem.

I have my Diskstation NAS running a RAID 1 array, and it also performs an incremental encrypted backup each moring around 3:30am to a secure cloud server. In addition, the Cloudstation perpetually synchronizes the data on its drive with a folder on my local computer called “Diskstation Backup”. That data is also directly accessible for immediate use in case the NAS itself ever takes a dump.

I can log into the NAS from anywhere that has an internet connection.

I’m a keep it simple type of person.
Personally, I don’t think I would ever use anything else for file storage… but that’s just me.

1 Like
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I’m like snowplow. I use a Synology DiskStation NAS for all my data. The client manager is on my computer. It works fine. I also have my various folders on the NAS mapped as drives which makes it easy to access. This time of year I do remote access from home and have never had a problem accessing my data. I do a daily backup on the second NAS drive but also do alternating backups to two external drives, one of which I take home each night. I’ve had the NAS for probably eight years now and have never had a problem with it. I have two WD green drives in the NAS. I’ll probably upgrade the drives in the next year or so. I’d stick with Synology for NAS.