Storing your work

The University Network

There are many options for storing your files, such as your hard drive and different types of storage media, such as CD-Roms, but we strongly recommend that you store and back up your files to the University network, from where you can have your own storage area on a server. Computers can fail or break down and if all your files are stored on the computer's hard drive (the C: drive) there's a chance you will lose them or they will be corrupted and become unaccessible.

As an employee of The University of Northampton you are given a Novell account to enable you to log onto computer, and this account includes your own area on the network, which only you can access, so is entirely secure.

This area is referred to as the R: drive and is labelled with your username at the front. e.g. if Joe Bloggs has the username of JBloggs and works in Infrastructure Services, the R: drive would be labelled as

JBLOGGS (\\CSRSTAFF_USER5_SERVER\USER5\INS) (R:)

If you share files with colleagues you may wish to request a departmental 'shared area', so you are able to store files and access them along with other authorised users (for example, your colleagues). This is particularly useful if you are away from the office (for example, on leave, off sick) and a colleague is covering your job and needs access to your work.

A file server is used to store files for example, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets etc. There are many advantages to saving your work this way:

• Easy to use; to save work to, or open work from a network file server, is as easy as if using the C: (hard drive) or A: (floppy disk drive) drive on your computer.
• No need to back up and retain files on a floppy disk or CD for example as the file servers are backed up automatically by Infrastructure Services.
• If you and your colleagues share certain files then you will be able to do so without having to e-mail the file to them, or save it to a disk etc.
• You will be able to access your files from other machines and not be restricted to working from your own desk - particularly useful if you work at both sites.
• Your files are secure and no unauthorised users will be able to access them as each user account has a unique name and password.
• In the case of a users own files, only the user can see their own folder and its contents.
• In the case of shared areas, only specific users nominated by the 'owner' of the area will be able to access the area and its contents.
• Furthermore, control can be exercised as to who can delete, create or re-name files in the shared area.

For further information, and to request your own area on the network, please contact the Staff Academic IT Support Desk on extension 2700, or by email: academicitsupport@northampton.ac.uk

NetStorage

NetStorage will enable you to access your work on the server from anywhere in the world using a standard web browser.

Visit www.northampton.ac.uk/netstorage and login using your novell username and password.

This service does not require any software installation onto your PC.

iFolder

This service synchronises the same folders across several computers. Work online or offline within the iFolder and when you next connect to the network, changes are automatically updated to the server and subsequently to any other computers that you may have configured.

This option is easily installed by the user within 5 minutes, and is accessible via a standard web browser within NetStorage.

Security

All these methods of storage require your username and password, and connection is via a secure encrypted connection.

If you have any queries with regard to these services, then please contact Steve Slade, the Data Centre Manager on Ext: 2215 or by email at: steve.slade@northampton.ac.uk