I watch a lot of movies on my Android phone. Generally, I have to copy the movies to my Android phone from my Laptop, which takes quite a while. I have a storage limitation of 16 GB on my Nexus 4 which can’t carry a lot of movies. So, I need to repeat the process each time when I am done watching one batch. To overcome this problem, I decided to use my computer as a network server for my Android Phone. This is pretty easy to set-up and you can quickly browse your computer files from an Android device remotely
To use your computer as a network server for your phone, both devices should be connected to the same network. If you have a WiFi connection, connect both the devices to the same network and you are good to go. We will also be using ES File Explorer on the Android device to specify the network path. This is an excellent file manager which can also be used to transfer files between Android devices over WiFi. You can download the ES File Explorer from the Google Play Store
Let’s get on with the steps.
1) First, you need to share the folder on your PC containing the files that you want to access on your Android device. Right Click on a folder and click on Properties. Select the Sharing tab and click on Share
2) You need to share with ‘Everyone’ and click on Add. You can restrict the access to Read or Read/Write.
3) Once this is done, you will get a confirmation of the network path. This needs to be entered while specifying the LAN connection on ES File Explorer.
4) On your Android device, open the ES File Explorer, slide to the Network tab and click on the ‘+’ sign to add a new network. Select LAN from the list of available options.
5) Now, you need to specify the network path obtained from Step 3 in the Server field. Make sure that you replace the back slashes with forward slashes, else the setup won’t work. Enter your Windows username and password and tap on OK.
6) You should now have access to the shared folder and you can see the folder listed in your LAN connections.
This is a very easy way how you can access your PC hard disk on an Android device remotely. You can browse your computer files from Android and can even make changes if you have given the Read/Write permission. Do try this out and let me know if you have any questions.