Table of Contents

Computer disk drives

General info

Important: Only network mapped drives are backed-up by institutional backup systems

Please note that Home drive has limited capacity so keep only important documents there.

Typical example of computer setup

Drives:

Local drive and mapped drive

A local drive is a drive (internal or external) that is connected to your computer. Although these drives could be shared, by default, they're only accessible to the user of the computer.

A good example of a local drive path of the Windows directory is the C: drive (primary hard drive)

A mapped drive is a networked drive that is assigned a drive letter. For example, you may map a network drive to the H: drive in Windows. After the drive is mapped, when looking at available drives you'll see an H: drive that looks like all other drives on your computer. Accessing the H: drive would open the network path.

Each needed shared directory should be mapped first, see: Map Network Drive (Shared Folder) in Windows

Local drives (including USB flash or USB external drive) are in section “Devices and drives”

Already mapped drives are in section “Network locations”