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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 Windows machine.
Support for Macintosh machines is available in our Backing Up and Recovering Your Data - Macintosh article.
Procedure
Getting Started
- Identify and focus on files that are likely to consume significant storage space, such as media files (videos, photos, audio), large documents, and group the identified large files by type (e.g., documents, media, archives). This will help you prioritize which file types to focus on first for the OneDrive backup.
- Determine the level of importance and business/academic necessity for each large file.
- Prioritize backing up the most critical and frequently accessed large files first.
- Ensure that shared files and folders have the correct permissions and access controls.
- Avoid publicly sharing sensitive or confidential information and do not upload any files containing sensitive information, such as G-Numbers, passwords, education records, or lists of physical addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses. This is a critical security and compliance requirement for protecting student, faculty and employee data.
- Periodically review the files stored in your OneDrive and remove any unnecessary or outdated content. This will help maintain a lean and efficient backup, optimize storage usage, and ensure that critical files are readily accessible
Private Network Drive
- Your GVSU network account has 250GB of storage space available.
- Your Documents folder is automatically backed up to your personal Private Network Drive.
- Your Documents folder is synced to any GVSU Windows computer that you sign into (including classroom/lab machines).
- By default, there is a shortcut icon for your Private Network Drive on the Desktop of each GVSU Windows machine you sign into.
- Important note: Your Windows computer's Desktop is not backed up or synced between computers so we do not recommend saving files to your Desktop.
Retrieving old or missing versions of files from your Private Network Drive (up to 30 days):
- You can recover missing data or old versions of files saved in your Private Network Drive, up to 30 days old:
- To begin, 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 appear in a folder properties 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.
- The OneDrive app comes pre-installed on your GVSU Windows 10 computer. You can save files directly to your OneDrive folder and sync data between devices, including smart phones and tablets by signing into OneDrive with your GVSU account on those devices. To access the OneDrive folder on your GVSU computer, open a File Explorer window and navigate to the OneDrive - Grand Valley State University shortcut on the left side of the window.
- 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.