Every member of the University (staff or student) is allocated a Home Folder so that they have a secure place in which to keep their University work.
Whenever you login at any University PC (staff office PCs, PCs in Cluster Rooms and the Remote Application Service (RAS)) your Home Folder is automatically connected as the H Drive.
The Home Folder is also referred to as My Documents (Windows XP PCs) or Documents (Windows Vista/7 PCs), as well as the H: Drive.
The Home Folder can also be accessed from anywhere on the Internet: see the page on remote access. This is used by those who are connecting their own computer to the campus network, as well as those who may be (for example) at home, or away at a conference.
Your Home Folder is completely private: no other users can see your data unless you choose to give them access (but see Sharing files below).
Note that “Administrator” has access: this refers to the systems which provide the service. Access for 'Administrator' should not be changed or the backup procedures may fail for your Home Folder. Disabling Administrator access also causes more general problems for the filestore management systems, and therefore ISS staff may reinstate the default permissions without notice.
The system can assess file-types in your Home Folder: automatic processes sometimes scan the filestore to ensure that inappropriate materials (e.g. MP3) are not taking up excessive amounts of this premium resource.
It is not recommended that you change any of the access settings for your Home Folder: If you need to share files on a regular basis, in particular if you are working on documents together with colleagues, the answer usually lies in arranging filestore in the Shared Filestore service – a solution very commonly used by Schools and Research Units. Enquire via your local School Computing Officer or via the IT Service Desk for shared filestore.
We are pleased to announce that due to improvements in the ISS File Server Infrastructure we are now in the position to offer all users, both staff and students a default 4GB quota for their Home Folders.
4GB is the maximum allowable quota. Users with a larger requirement can make use of the Home Archive Service which provides another 20GB of storage for files in a compressed format.
Filescreens are a Windows feature which ISS have implemented on the Home Folder Service. Filescreens allow us to prevent files with specified extensions from being saved there. We do this in order to channel the correct filetypes to the appropriate filestores (ISS provide filestores for various purposes).
Note: A side effect of this block is that deleting existing PST files may occasionally result in an error as files are being moved to a hidden Network Recycle Bin directory within the Home Folder. If this occurs simply hold down the SHIFT key when deleting the file.