Home Folder

As a registered student, you have access to your own private space on the network. In this space, known as a Home Folder, you can save your work. The advantage of using a home folder is that you can access it from any Computing Lab in the University because it is stored centrally on a server. See below for advice on how to access your home folder from off campus / over CampusNet.

Your home folder is private! No-one but you can access the folder or delete it. Please note that there is a limit to how much data the folder can hold. The limit for students is 256MB. If you are over quota when you logon you will see a warning message. Once your limit is reached you will not be able to save anything within the folder, unless you delete unwanted or old files from it. You can easily check to see if you are over your size limit, by right clicking within your home folder and attempting to create a new folder. If you have exceeded your limit you will not be able to create a new folder.

There has been an increase in numbers of students losing their work on lab computers due to not saving their files correctly. Please see the guidance below:  

• ALWAYS save your work to your home directory when using a lab computer.  You will find this in ‘My Computer’ as your ‘H:’ drive. On a Windows 7 lab PC (for example, computers on Level 2 in the Library), double click the 'Computer' icon then double click the H drive icon - it will be named 'yourusername on wide...'.  Your home directory is backed up daily in order to ensure your files are safe.

• NEVER save your work on the desktop of a lab computer. Personal files on the desktop are deleted as soon as you log out.

• ALWAYS ‘save as’ your work if you are opening it directly from your email.  If you open a document directly from your email using a lab computer, and then just click ‘save’ instead of ‘save as’, it will be deleted as soon as you log out (due to it being saved only to temporary files). Better yet, if you are opening documents from your email, right click on the document in your email and choose ‘save target as’, or ‘save link as’ to save a copy directly to your home directory.

If you have any questions about saving your work, please contact us at the Information Centre.

Connecting to your home folder over CampusNet

You can access your home folder from your own laptop or computer from on or off campus, if you have installed our CampusNet software.

Once the CampusNet installation is complete, you will have a desktop shortcut called 'Connect to CampusNet' and (if you selected the option during installation) you will have a desktop shortcut to 'My University Home' (your home folder). To connect to the university, double click the CampusNet icon and login with your network password. Once connected you will be able to access your home folder via the 'My University Home' shortcut.

If you have not installed the shortcut to 'My University Home' as part of the CampusNet installation, you can create a shortcut manually as follows:

• log onto campusnet
• RIGHT click on an empty part of the desktop and choose new=>Shortcut
• In the 'location' box, type \\wide\users\initial of your surname\your username eg. \\wide\users\d\trd00001
• click 'next'
• Give the shortcut a name such as 'My University Home' and click 'finish'