UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

I am currently using Samba to access remote Unix file systems from Windows. However, it is slow, and I presume insecure in the sense that file contents are transmitted unencrypted. I also wonder if passwords are transmitted in plain text in this protocol or not. For these reasons I am looking for an alternative.

I heard there might be a way to use SCP which is both faster and secure, but I don't know what program or package provides this functionality for both Unix and Windows.

The one good thing about Samba is that it is easy to address lots of different remote systems using UNC paths such as \\server.example.com. I am concerned that alternative implementations would rely on mapped drives, thus restricting the addressing to the number of available drive letters on the Windows system and having to remember which letter was mapped to which server.

What solutions are out there at the moment?

scp is part of ssh suite (openssh/openssl...) but its only a secure-copy tool...

I dont see other alternatives to samba except some commercial pcnfs or nfsclient for windows... (I still use an old NT4 server for this with Reflection NFS-Gateway product...(ended quite some time ago...))

If you want to access some files from your unix box without using samba you can configure and enable the ssh service and use WinSCP or any equivalent like ncftp, Filezilla, ProFTP. etc.

Then just connect to via port 22 then you will be able to browse and access your file.

btw: Samba has better performance compared to windows sharing depend on how you configure and implement it.

Hope this will help.