Connecting to W & P Drives on Windows

Owned by Will Mack, created
Last updated: Nov 28, 2022 by Justin Fleming
3 min read

Please use the following instructions to access your department's W Drive or your own personal P Drive from a Windows-based PC.

Note: screenshots here are from Windows 10 and the appearance of these steps may vary somewhat depending on the version of Windows you are running.

Instructions for connecting to W Drive

  1. On your PC, open Computer (Win 7 and 8) or This PC (Win 10) from Windows Explorer (Win 7) or File Explorer (Win 8 and 10) and click on Map Network Drive.
    Alternately, you can right-click on Computer or This PC on the desktop and click Map Network Drive.

  2. Select W: as your Drive letter. Enter the following address under Folder: \\netapp1.ncssm.edu\department\[YourDepartmentNameHere]. Change [YourDepartmentNameHere] to your NCSSM department name without the brackets. For instance "...\department\its".
    You will need to click the checkbox next to Connect using different credentials.
    Optional: If you would like to automatically reconnect to the W drive at login (note that you will need to be on the NCSSM network for this step to work), click the checkbox next to Reconnect at sign-in.
    Department choices: Here are the available department names to choose from: (note that these are not case-sensitive)
    * AcademicPrograms
    * Admissions
    * Advancement
    * Athletics
    * Business
    * Chancellor
    * Clinic
    * Communications
    *Counselling
    * DEEP
    * Engineering
    * HR
    * Humanities
    * IR
    * ITS
    * Library
    * Mathematics
    * NCSSM
    * PhysicalPlant
    * Q
    * Registrar
    * Science
    * Security
    * SLA
    * SLI

  3. Click Finish.

  4. When prompted to authenticate, provide your NCSSM username with ncssm\ in front, for example: ncssm\justin.fleming, and your NCSSM password.
    Optional: If you would like to save your credentials so you are not prompted every time you connect, click the checkbox next to Remember my credentials.

  5. Click OK.

  6. Your department's W Drive will appear in Computer or This PC.
    Optional: If you would like for network shares to appear on your desktop, right-click on the W Drive and click Create shortcut.

 

Instructions for connecting to P Drive

Note: ITS does not recommend the use of P Drives, and strongly suggest using Google Drive instead. For instructions on how to set up Google Drive, please visit this link: Google Drive

  1. On your PC, open Computer (Win 7 and 8) or This PC (Win 10) from Windows Explorer (Win 7) or File Explorer (Win 8 and 10) and click on Map Network Drive.
    Alternately, you can right-click on Computer or This PC on the desktop and click Map Network Drive.

     

  2. Select P: as your Drive letter. Enter the following address under Folder: \\netapp1.ncssm.edu\staff\[yourusernamehere] Change [yourusernamehere] to your NCSSM username without the brackets. For instance "...\staff\justin.fleming".
    You will need to click the checkbox next to Connect using different credentials.
    Optional: If you would like to automatically reconnect to the W drive at login (note that you will need to be on the NCSSM network for this step to work), click the checkbox next to Reconnect at sign-in.

  3. Click Finish.

  4. When prompted to authenticate, provide your NCSSM username with ncssm\ in front, for example: ncssm\justin.fleming, and your NCSSM password.
    Optional: If you would like to save your credentials so you are not prompted every time you connect, click the checkbox next to Remember my credentials.

  5. Click OK.

  6. Your P Drive will appear in Computer or This PC.
    Optional: If you would like for network shares to appear on your desktop, right-click on the P Drive and click Create shortcut.


If you have any questions or issues with these processes, please contact ITS.