Backing Up and Recovering Your Data - Macintosh

When to Use?

This article is intended for GVSU faculty and staff. It outlines the process for backing up and retrieving your data on a GVSU owned Macintosh machine.

Support for Windows machines is available in our Backing Up and Recovering Your Data - Windows article.

Procedure

Private Network Drive

• Important note: Data on your GVSU Macintosh computer is not backed up automatically.
• Your GVSU network account has 250GB of available storage.
• Follow these steps to manually back up data on your Private Network Drive:
  • Make sure Enterprise Connect is signed in: Open the Enterprise Connect app and sign in with your GVSU username and password.
    
    • Enterprise Connect will remember you so you do not need to log in every day.
    • If you are off campus you will need to be connected to the VPN (Ivanti Secure Access VPN) before Enterprise Connect will allow you to sign in.
  • Once signed in, a DFS icon will appear on your computer's desktop. Double-click this icon to open the drive in Finder.
    
  • Open the folder ending with "-Private" and the next folder named with username. This is your private network drive. Anything you save here will be backed up and is only accessible to you.
    • Pro Tip: Navigating to the "MyData" > "Documents" folder will bring you to the location where your Windows Documents folder data is backed up. You can save files and folders here from your Mac so they are easily accessible from a GVSU Windows computer (including classroom and lab machines).
      

Retrieving old or missing versions of files from your Private Network Drive (up to 30 days):

• Important note: Data recovery is only possible from a GVSU Windows computer (including classroom and lab machines).
• You can recover missing data or old versions of files up to 30 days old by logging into a GVSU-owned Windows machine and following these steps:
  • Open File Explorer and navigate to the folder with the missing file(s).
  • Right click on the folder and select Restore previous versions.
    
  • A list of back-up versions will populate in a new window.
    
  • Find the date and time you'd like to retrieve data from and double-click it. This will open a separate File Explorer window with the date and time you selected listed in the navigation bar at the top.
    
  • Locate the data you want to restore and open it or copy & paste it to the appropriate folder in original File Explorer window (which will not have a date and time in the navigation bar).
• IT can recover missing data up to 90 days old. Contact IT Services at it@gvsu.edu with the file location and approximate date the file last existed and your ticket will be escalated to our data retrieval team. Data older than 90 days is not recoverable.

OneDrive

• GVSU provides 1TB of cloud storage for your account via Microsoft OneDrive. Simply click the link and sign in with your GVSU email address and password.
• Once signed in you can upload files to the cloud share them with colleagues and students.
• To install the OneDrive desktop app on your GVSU Mac:
  • Open the GVSU Software app
    
  • Click Browse, then select Office in the menu on the left, then locate OneDrive and click Install.
    
  • Once installation is complete, open the OneDrive app and sign in with your GVSU email address and password. A OneDrive shortcut will be added to your Favorites menu in Finder for easy access.
    
  • You can now save files directly to the OneDrive folder location on your computer and sync that data between devices, including smart phones and tablets by signing into OneDrive with your GVSU account on those devices.
• Important note: Do not upload data with Personally Identifiable Information to OneDrive. This includes files containing G-Numbers, passwords, education records, and lists of physical addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses.