Nah, the point with FileTable is exactly that it makes it possible to update the database from Explorer and similar. The difference between storing just a file path in the database, is that if you delete the file from Explorer, this is also reflected in the database, so get the consistency. And the files are included in the database backup.

Now, users needs to have access to the share where the files are located, and if they don't have access the files cannot be manipulated. But if they do not, there is not much point in using FileTable at all, but you can use regular FILESTREAM instead.

For FILESTREAM to be meaningful, you should use the Win32API to write/read files. If you read them with SQL statements, you should get the same performance as regular blobs.