Windows File Management

| Minerva - Info | Webmail | Apps. Svr - Info | L O - Info | Portals: Student / Staff / Training | Wiki - Info | 

Map a Disk Drive

What's a 'Network drive?'

Your computer stores your work on its disk drive. A 'Network drive' is just another disk drive - but rather than being in the machine in front of you, it's:

• on another machine on the network - a server - that's powered up and available all the time
• it sees regular backups
• it's more secure than the disk in your own machine
• you can reach it when you're logged on to any other machine on the same network, and from home using VPN

Examples of network drives at Bath Spa University include:

• Your staff 'S' drive (to which only you have access)
• Your department or school's network drive (Everyone in your department or school may have access to this, it's the easiest place to use use to share files with others)

That's useful - how come I can't see my/my schools network drive when I save a file?

You may need to map the drive first - so that your computer lists it automatically.

What does 'Map a drive' mean?

There may be hundreds of network drives: rather than hunt through a list every time you need your 'S' drive, you can 'Map' it - this sets your machine to connect to it when you log in and treat it a bit like one of its own disk drives.

When mapped, it's listed as a destination when you save a file, so that you can select a menu 'File/save as' and easily pick the network drive as a place to save it.

Your machine gives the drive a letter by which to identify it. At Bath Spa University you should find that your machine is set up to 'Map' your own network drive and call it your 'S' drive - but if that setting is lost you can rebuild it yourself as follows - or do the same thing to map a shared school drive.

| Top of page: basic info about this |

Use 'Windows Explorer' to map your 'S' drive - or a school shared network drive

• Run Windows Explorer - perhaps by holding down the 'Windows' key and pressing 'E'
• In the left hand panel, look for any 'Broken' mappings - they'll have a red cross on them - right click them and select 'Disconnect' from the context menu ...
• Choose from the menus 'Tools/Map Network Drive'
• Up pops a window - like the one on the left
• The first field gives you a list of drive letters that are unused - it will show the first available drive letter, for your own network drive, set this to 'S', if you're mapping another drive, choose a spare letter.
• The second field needs the path to your network drive. You have two choices:

Feed the second field the network path

The path's in the form \\npwin-staff1\sdrives\username You can select the path from this page, and then copy it and paste it into the box, using the shortcut keys 'Control + 'C' and 'Control + V'. Then replace 'Username' with your own username - for example, mine would be annm1.

If that fails, browse to the folder that you need to map

This is pretty simple, but not quite straightforward, as there are traps

If you're looking for your your own username, you'll probably find it listed at least twice - once against your own computer, if it's on

A network drive will look like this though ...

If you're looking for a school drive, it will be in \\Staff1\ but followed by the name of the school or similar - see the table below for some common locations. Also, it can be difficult to browse an entire network for a single folder as it's a 'Needle in a haystack' situation. To help, you'll find that you can start typing the name of what you're looking for, and the list will scroll to that name if it can.

• Tick the 'Reconnect at login' check box - the drive will then map itself in future.

Finally, select the 'Finish' button and your machine will connect to your 'S' drive. You can connect to your school or department shared drive in the same way, by browsing to it or using the path at the foot of this page

Disconnecting from a network drive

Open Windows Explorer, look for the drive from which you wish to disconnect, right mouse click it and from the context menu choose 'Disconnect'.

Share locations

Use this table to discover the path to your shared folder. You can map one of these yourself - copy and paste the path from here to the 'Map network drive' dialogue.

\\staff1\CDP	CDP
\\staff1\careers db	careers db
\\staff1\Disability	Disability
\\staff1\Prospects Planner	Prospects Planner
\\staff1\safety	safety
\\staff1\Student Support Services	Student Support Services
\\staff1\inter	inter
\\staff1\catering	catering
\\staff1\ecdl	ECDL
\\staff1\library	library
\\staff1\Staff suggestions	Staff suggestions
\\staff1\Newton Park Library	Newton Park Library
\\staff1\cent-serv	cent-serv
\\staff1\igf	igf
\\staff1\infopathforms	infopathforms
\\staff1\marketing	marketing
\\staff1\MTC	MTC
\\staff1\su	su
\\staff1\Subject Leaders	Subject Leaders
\\staff1\unison	unison
\\staff1\music	music
\\staff1\performing arts	performing arts
\\staff1\smpa data	smpa data
\\staff1\property	property
\\staff1\staff	staff
\\staff1\Teaching	Teaching
\\staff1\BSO	BSO
\\staff1\CPD	CPD
\\staff1\EHS Technicians	EHS Technicians
\\staff1\ITT	ITT
\\staff1\Liason	Liason
\\staff1\netwisp33	netwisp33
\\staff1\Social Sciences	Social Sciences
\\staff1\Historical & Cultural Studies	Historical & Cultural Studies
\\staff1\English & Creative Studies	English & Creative Studies

Ways to use a shared drive

Create a folder on a shared drive and by default, anyone with access to the drive will be able to see material you place in the folder. You may be able to set permissions to further restrict access to a folder. Assuming you've mapped the drive and created the folder, here's how to set permissions. First, though, you need to be careful - the following is a bit like sitting on a branch to saw it through - you need to be careful not to cut through on the side that's attached to the tree - read on.

• Right-mouse-click the folder and choose 'Properties' and then the 'Security' tab.
• The folder will probably be inheriting permissions from its parent. Select the 'Advanced' button, and remove the tick from the 'Inherit' control.
• At this stage, you'll see the following dialogue.
  
  This innocently implies that if *you* are one of the people included in the inherited permissions, you need to be aware that selecting 'Remove' will remove *You* from the folder - you'll no longer be able to touch the folder permissions and you'll need rescuing by a system administrator. Therefore, you probably need to select 'Copy' to copy the existing permissions to the folder itself rather than having it inherit permissions from its parent.
• When you've sorted out the 'Inheritance' (and you hopefully still have access to the folder) you can continue to use the 'Permissions' tab to change the people who should be allowed to use the contents of the folder, or remove those that shouldn't - you'll see that you can set the sort of access people can enjoy as well.
• Lastly, if necessary, remove any group access to the folder - but don't remove 'Administrators' or 'Double take replication' - those are both necessary for the correct operation of the network drives and doesn't mean that administrators read your files ...

When this is done, you'll have a folder to which only the people you've authorised will have access. To prove this you can ask someone who isn't on the list to try to view the contents of the folder - if you've set things up right, they'll be able to see the folder but not its contents.

UNC or 'Universal Naming Convention' Paths

If browsing to a file or folder doesn't work for you, and you know the path to it, try providing that instead - use the 'UNC path'.

UNC paths describe the location of a volume, directory, or file. Your network drive is likely to be this: \\npwin-staff1\sdrives\username

UNIX machines (and they started this) use forward slashes as separators - if something doesn't work you can try the effects of reversing the slashes in the UNC ...

| File Index | Top | Next |Bath Spa University |