Technology
Help Desk
What Are My Drives?
Technology at Simmons College provides storage on file servers to provide access to users' computer files. These data are available in various shared folders, also known as "file server drives."
The drives available on the Simmons file server and their purposes are: Dept, StudentData, Public, and your personal folder
Dept (g:)
The Dept folder provides space for each department at Simmons to store shared files. To access your department's files, open your Dept drive and double-click on the folder with your department's name on it. For more information about reasons to use your department drive, please see below.
Dept is available to faculty and staff.
StudentData (n:) & Public (p:)
These drives are accessible by anyone on campus. They can be used for transferring files to someone else on campus. You may use them for whatever else you need it for, but please be careful. These drives are accessible by anyone, so do not store any confidential files there. Also, most users have the ability to remove files from the public drives and these drives are not backed up, so do not store any files on the public drives for which you do not have backups stored elsewhere.
StudentData is intended for students' use; staff and faculty may also use it. Information older than 10 days is routinely deleted from StudentData: it is not intended for long-term storage or backup.
Everyone at Simmons can access Public; while students can read files on Public, they cannot change or delete files stored there.
Your Personal Folder (y:)
If you are a faculty or staff member, your personal folder appears as on 'Mcbfs1\User'. If you are a student, your personal folder appears as on 'Mcbfs1\Student'.
This drive is your own personal space on the Simmons file server. You are the only person who has access to this drive.* The technology department backs up the contents of the file server regularly, and works hard to ensure that your data are always secure and available. If you are a faculty or staff member, you should not save any files on your Desktop or in "My Documents." Instead, save all of your files in your file server folder. If you are a student, you should save important work and files that you will use at multiple computers in your personal folder.
Each user of the Simmons College network has access to his or her own personal folder on the file server.
Reasons to use the Dept Drive
The Department Drive allows for easy sharing of files among the members of a department. Advantages include:
- The department drive only allows access to members of one department. You may store files that are confidential to your department in the department drive without worrying about users accessing them who aren't supposed to.*
- The department drive allows everyone in the department to access files. You can share files among members of your department without cluttering each other's email boxes. Also, with only one location for files that you share, anyone who needs a file will always have access to the most recent version.
- Technology can create sub-folders and grant only specific users access rights. You can request folders for smaller groups within your department that need to share files.
If your department has student workers, they can be granted access to your department's network drive for the time that they are working with your department. Please make sure that you notify Technology when users leave your department, so that only authorized users will have access to your department drive.
For instructions about changing your file server password, and accessing your file server folders, please see the other tips available at http://my.simmons.edu/services/technology/helpdesk/fileserver.
*Some Technology staff have access rights to all file server folders; their access is governed by the Technology at Simmons College Confidentiality Agreement.