Can others access my H drive?

About H Drive and G drive

If you have personal files that you want to save on the Library IT fileserver, store them on your H drive (home directory).

If you have files that need to be shared by multiple people, store them in a folder on the G drive (group directories).

The H drive and the G drive are “network drives.”

Files saved to the H and G drives are backed up every night by Library IT. Files saved to C drive on your computer are NOT backed up every night and are vulnerable to loss if your computer crashes.

How to Get H and G drives set up

  • Request an H drive by logging an OTRS ticket. Be sure to include your Net ID.
  • Request a new folder on the G drive by logging an OTRS ticket. Include a recommended name for the new folder and the names and Net ID’s of all Library employees who need access to it.

How to View Your H Drive and Your G Drive Folders

To view the contents of your H drive or your G drive folders click the “Computer” icon on your computer’s desktop.  All the network drives to which you have access appear in the “Network Drives” section of this page.  Click the icon for the drive you want to view.

If your drive does not show up or you’re accessing it from a different computer that does not automatically map the drive, you can always add the drive yourself. You will have to go through this process for each drive you wish to map.

  • Open Computer.
  • Go to the Tools menu and select ‘Map Network Drive’.
  • Choose any available letter (or G and H if you’d prefer to keep it consistent) for the Drive letter.
  • Enter \\files.library.illinois.edu\groupfiles as the folder for traditional G drive and enter \\files.library.illinois.edu\YourNetID$ for traditional H drive access. Replace YourNetID with your actual NetID.
  • If you are not logged in as yourself on this computer, click the ‘Connect using a different user name.’ link. On the window that pops up, enter your user name as UOFI\ YourNetID and the password will be your AD password. Replace YourNetID with your actual NetID.
  • Click Finish. You should now see your drive listed under My Computer with the letter you selected.
  • If you are on a shared access machine, you should Disconnect the Drive before you leave by going to My Computer again. Then go to the Tools menu and select ‘Disconnect Network Drive.’ A window will pop-up. There choose the drive you mapped and click the Ok button. This will need to be repeated for each drive you mapped.

When You Leave the Library

When you leave your job at the Library, your access to your H drive and your G drive folders will be removed. The files on your H drive will be deleted.  Be sure to transfer any H drive files you don’t want to lose to a flash drive, or some other form of removable media, before you leave the Library.

The College are in the process of decommissioning the H: drive. These pages are here as legacy and used for reference only. If you wish to save your personal work or study files, please use OneDrive for Business.

All students and members of staff are allocated space on the Colleges Home directory or H: drive. You can access your H: drive from any computer connected to the College network.

Access your H: drive

Find out how to access your H: drive using the online home directory finder.

If you need to access your H: Drive remotely, follow the instructions on our remote working pages. 

H: drive quotas

Undergraduate students

Undergraduate students are allocated up to 4GB of secure file space each.

Staff and postgraduate students

Staff and postgraduate students are allocated up to 8GB.

Additional space

Additional H: drive space can be provided to staff at the rates in this table, subject to the approval of your Departmental IT Representative.

Costs for additional H: drive space

Summary of the table's contents

Quota band (GB)Additional cost (from base 4GB for undergraduate and service accounts) (£ per annum)Additional cost (from base 8GB for postgraduate and staff accounts) (£ per annum)
 4  Default - no charge  N/A
 8  10.00  Default - no charge
 12  20.00  10.00
 16  30.00  20.00
 20  40.00  30.00
A one-off fee of £10.00 will be levied to administer the change of each quota band request. Departments can also make a case for the quota band for an individual student to be increased and in such cases no additional fees will be charged.

How to recover a deleted H: drive file

Your H: drive is backed up daily, so if you delete a file or folder you can check for a previously saved version and restore it yourself.

Instructions for recovering deleted H: drive files

  • Click on the Finder icon
  • Click on Go in the menu bar and select Utilities
  • Choose Terminal from the window
  • Type this command in the Terminal window: defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
  • Press the Return button on your keyboard
  • Press the Option (alt) button on your keyboard while simultaneously clicking on the Finder icon in the dock to relaunch Finder
  • Close and reopen your H: drive to see the ~snapshot folder
  • Browse to the folder that corresponds to the date you wish to restore from and reopen your lost document

You may want to rename any older documents or items so that you don't overwrite items that have the same name.

  • Locate the file or folder where the item you wish to restore is (the H: drive itself, for example)
  • Right click on the file or folder name and select Restore previous versions
  • Browse the list of Previous versions shown to find the version that corresponds to the date and time from which you wish to restore
  • Highlight that version and choose Open
  • Select the files or folders you wish to recover and copy them to a new folder location

You may want to rename any older documents or items so that you don't overwrite items that have the same name.

How long are backups kept?

Most requests to restore a deleted file are made within 24 hours of that file having been deleted. For that reason, backups are made more frequently during this initial 24 hour window than after it. Further backups are made with decreasing frequency for 7 days:

  • Days 12 (last 2448 hours): backups taken at 08:00, 12:00, 16:00, 20:00 and 00:00 are available. The exact versions that will be available to you depend on the time of day you're browsing
  • Days 37: A single backup is available for each of these days and is taken at midnight

Recovery of files older than 7 days and younger than 90 days has to be carried out by the ICT Support team. If you can't see the previous version of a file that you need, or the file or folder is not present, contact the ICT Service Desk with:

  • the folder location and filename of the file(s) or folder(s)
  • the date and time it was last there

Is an H drive private?

Your H: drive is your "home" drive. The W: drive is the "workgroup" area, typically (though not always) used for file sharing with others in your department. H: is considered your private space. Only you have access to it.

Can I access my H drive from home?

Rather than e-mailing documents back and forth or using unreliable removable media (flash drives, floppy disks, etc), students can use the VPN connection to connect to their H drives from home. High speed Internet access (cable modem or DSL) is highly recommended, however dial- up will work.

What is the purpose of the H drive?

Your H: drive, or Home drive, is the main place that you should save files to. It is a network drive which means that it is not tied to the computer that you are using (files stored locally on a computer are typically stored on the C: drive).

Is H drive the hard drive?

The H drive is the portion of the hard drive that is not compressed.