Information on how to access your network drives 

ADVANTAGES TO SAVING ON THE F DRIVE

Safety:  IT Services encourages the use of your “F” Drive for saving files on the network server.  This protection is also true for your GroupWise archives (For more on saving archives to your “F” Drive, look in the Academic Computing section under Technology Services on the Lycoming College web site.)  Your files are duplicated in “real time” onto mirrored hard drives in a location with smoke, water, heat and motion detectors. These files are backed up nightly.

Flexibility: The system is able to recognize accounts at different campus locations, thus making files easily accessible when logging into a lab computer.  When doing instruction in a classroom, presentation in a lecture hall, or other facilities on campus, you can retrieve your files via your login.

More security: Files saved on your local computer can be easily stolen by anyone who gets physical access to your computer. Files saved on the network server can only be accessed by your password.

Emergency access and computer upgrades:  When your office computer requires a repair or especially when the hard drive goes bad, you can easily access your files from another office computer or work in a lab.  IT Services has a limited number of spare computers to swap into your office. Saving the files on the server allows you an alternate until your computer is able to be replaced.  Whether receiving a new computer or an upgrade, there is no guarantee that important files will all be retrievable on your old system.  Saving them on your “F” Drive insures their location in a single place.

Off campus access:  You can access your server files from anywhere that you have internet access using the same account and password that you use to log into the Novell network every day.  Assuming you have a program like Microsoft Word installed on your home computer, you can double-click the file icon in your web browser and edit the file as you would in the office.  Call the help desk for more on this.

DISK SPACE LIMITS

Checking your space:  Double-click on the “My Computer” icon on your desktop.  Click just once on the icon of the hard drive that has the letter “F.”  On the status bar at the bottom of the “My Computer” window, you will see the capacity and free space available for your personal area.

Limits:  Currently, most users or departmental shared folders have a default of 20MB of space on the “F” Drive.  Faculty, staff, or departments requiring additional space for special needs should contact the IT Services help desk.  Due to physical disk limits on the server, equipment costs, and time for backups at night, there is a space limit by any one individual on the server.

Archive:  As regular maintenance of your files, or when reaching the upper limits of individual disk space, there are 3 ways to archive them off your personal “F” Drive:

1. Preferred Method: “Burn” them at the Faculty Workstations or A5 Lab onto a CD-R Disc using the CD/RW drive.  Once they are on the disk, there is no way to change the information, which may be just what you want.  Make 2 and keep one copy in your office and one elsewhere.  An advantage of this method is that these discs can be read from any computer’s CD-ROM drive.

2. Save them on a Zip drive.  A disadvantage of this is that in a few years, there may not be any computers on campus that will read your particular Zip disk.

3. “Burn” them at the Faculty Workstations or A5 Lab onto a CD-RW Disc using the CD/RW drive.  You can change the information on one of these disks about 1000 times.  A disadvantage is that this can only be read from another computer that has a CD/RW drive.  Contact the IT Services help desk for assistance in CD “burning.