Network Storage Drives

UNDERSTANDING STORAGE DRIVES:

Local storage drives: Once logged onto a campus computer, faculty/staff will have access to the local storage drives on their computer. The local drives are for each person's operating system and are usually reserved with the lower letters of the alphabet (a, b, c, d, e, etc.) Documents may be saved on the local storage drives. However, backups are the sole responsibility of the person saving the documents there.

Network storage drives: In addition to local drives, each faculty/staff member has access to certain network drives when logged onto their office computer. Network drives are automatically backed up twice daily, so there is a large advantage to placing documents on a network drive.

Confidential Information: Especially data that contains social security numbers or other sensitive information, should not be stored on the public drives. These are the S: and T: drives. All faculty, staff and student workers have access to the S: drive. All faculty, staff and students have access to the T: drive.
Any files that contain confidential data should be stored on your personal (P:) drive or your departmental drive (U:). If you have any special concerns or you need a folder to exchange confidential data with another department, please contact Sam Josuweit in Network Services.

By double clicking on the "My Computer" icon located on the computer desktop, you will see what drives are available to you.

The following network drives are available on campus. You may have all or some of the drives described on this list:

S	The S drive contains public information, BU documents, job postings, etc. *Note: There is a public folder on the S drive:* This folder is called Public. This is a place anyone can temporarily save documents to. Be aware though that this is for very temporary storage. Documents saved here will be purged each Sunday evening. This folder is designed for a quick place to share documents. Also be aware that this folder is able to viewed by anyone logged into the network; therefore, do not place confidential documents in this folder.
P	Your personal network drive - (4 Gigabytes of storage) - See below to understand the benefits of utilizing your P drive!
T	Student/Fac/Staff Public Share drive. 4 GB user limit. This drive is designed for temporary file transfer use only. Documents on this drive that are older than 7 days will be purged Sunday evening at midnight. This folder is able to viewed by anyone logged into the network; therefore, do not place confidential documents in this folder.
U	A group shared drive, organized by department.
V	Database area for shared Access databases. If you need to share (or have support on) your Access databases place them on the V drive. If your Access databases do not need to be shared, you may keep them on your departmental shared (U) drive.
W	Web area for personal home pages.
R	Some departments will have an R drive that is used for department servers.

Warning: No file storage is absolutely secure. You are always responsible for backing up your files and maintaining your personal storage space.

UNDERSTANDING YOUR PERSONAL NETWORK DRIVE (P DRIVE):
• Each person who logs onto the network has their own personal network space to save documents. This is the P drive.
• The P drive has an allotted 4 gigabytes of space for your use.

Benefits of saving documents on the P drive :
• No one else will be able to access your files.
• Your files will be automatically backed up nightly.
• Your files will be able to be easily restored if accidentally overwritten or deleted.

To save a document on your P drive : Create your document and then click on File - Save as, follow these instructions:

* Click the drop down button next to Save in.
• Click on the P drive.
• If you have folders created under the P drive, click on the folder you would like your document to go into.
• Enter a file name (bottom of window).
• Click Save button (bottom right of window).

Snapshots (shadow copies) of your network files: The server provides a feature called shadow copies (for PCs running Windows XP or Windows 2000; earlier versions not supported) .

• Snapshots are created of documents saved on network at 6 am & noon daily.
• The server will create up to 64 snapshot copies. This gives you lots of opportunity to pull from older versions!
• Once 64 snapshots have been created, the oldest files will be purged and overwritten with newer copies.

To find shadow copies of your file(s), follow these steps:
• Right mouse click on the Start button.
• Click on Explore.
• Click on the network drive you have your document stored on.
• Find the folder where your document is/was; right click on it.
• If your document was not saved in a folder, right click on the drive name.
• Click on Properties and choose the tab for "Previous Versions"

You will see a screen similar to this when you right mouse click on a folder:

Screenshot of Previous Versions

When the window appears, click on the Previous Versions Tab.

You will see documents or folders containing documents. This depends on how you organize your documents.

Highlight the document, folder, or the P drive itself and choose View or Copy. Be cautious using "Restore" - you could accidentally restore an entire folder and overwrite some documents you didn't intend to overwrite.

• If a document had been accidentally deleted, right click on the folder (or drive) it was stored in before deletion to find it.
• Look at the previous versions and you should easily be able to find your deleted document.

Note: The shadow copy client is only available on documents saved to a network drive. If you save something to your C drive, you will not see a tab for previous versions!