Access Research Storage on Windows

Research Storage can be accessed on your Windows computer by mapping a network drive. When you map a drive, the storage will appear as a drive letter just like your computer’s local hard drive.

Requirements

Windows Version

Research Storage can be accessed from recent versions of Windows including:

Windows 10
Windows 11
Windows Server 2012 and later

Research Storage cannot be accessed from older versions of Windows including Windows 7 because they don’t support the necessary security features.

Networking

Research Storage may be accessed on your Windows computer from both on and off-campus.

Connected to NC State’s Network

If you are on-campus and connected to NC State’s network, nothing further needs to be done.

Not Connected to NC State’s Network

If you are off-campus or not connected to NC State’s network, you will need to connect to NC State’s virtual private network (VPN) using the Cisco AnyConnect client. Please follow the instructions on the Virtual Private Networking (VPN) Service site to install the client and connect to the VPN.

Instructions

Determine the Network Path

You will need to know the network path of the storage in order to map a drive to it. The network path for each Research Storage share is conveniently shown on the Research Storage Manager page. For Windows, you’ll want to use the SMB Mount Path.

Go to the Research Storage Manager page and login with your NC State credentials
Locate the share you want to map a drive to
Locate the SMB Mount Path
Copy the network path beginning with “\\” to your computer’s clipboard by clicking the blue icon on the right:

How to Manually Determine the Network Path

The instructions above are sufficient if you only need to know which path to use to map a drive to Research Storage. This section describes how the paths are determined. It may be useful if you need to programmatically construct the network paths.

Individual Shares

The network path for Individual shares follows this format:

\\rs.oit.ncsu.edu\rs1\researchers\<FIRST INITIAL>\<UNITY ID>

For example, if your Unity ID is jbdoe, the network path for your Individual share would be:

\\rs.oit.ncsu.edu\rs1\researchers\j\jbdoe

The directory named after your Unity ID will not exist until you have set up your Individual Share. See the Individual Shares page for instructions on how to do that.

Project Shares

The network path for Project shares follows this format:

\\oitrspprd.hpc.ncsu.edu\rsstu\users\<FIRST INITIAL>\<UNITY ID>\<SHARE  NAME>

You do not need to map multiple drive letters if you have access to multiple Project Shares. You can simply map a single drive to the the “users” directory and then navigate down to the Project Share directories you have access to:

\\oitrspprd.hpc.ncsu.edu\rsstu\users

Map a Drive

Open File Explorer
Select This PC from the left pane
Click the Computer tab at the top
Click Map network drive

Select a drive letter
Enter the SMB Mount Path path you copied from the Research Storage Manager page
Click Finish

Windows Security / Enter network credentials

If you are presented with a Windows Security / Enter network credentials dialog box, enter your Unity ID followed by @wolftech.ad.ncsu.edu:

<Unity ID>@wolftech.ad.ncsu.edu

If the username field is already populated but does not match the string shown above:

Click the More choices link
Click Use a different account
Enter the username shown above, replacing <Unity ID> with your actual Unity ID
Click the OK button to map the drive

File Explorer should open to the newly mapped drive.

Mount Research Storage on Windows