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Accessing File Shares♯

Most file shares managed by CTS are served from Windows servers as standard SMB shares. Users can connect from any operating system that supports SMB 3.0 connections.

All supported file shares are restricted to local network access. To access these files remotely, please connect to Drexel's VPN first.

In the instructions below, please replace any placeholder text in {curly brackets} with the appropriate info before trying to connect. **If you'd like to update the instructions for your username, then please enter it here: **

From Windows♯

For users logged onto a computer with their drexel.edu domain account, access is straightforward: simply type the desired network path starting with a double backslash into the Start Menu search or into a Windows file explorer address bar (not a web browser).

If accessing files from a personal computer, you will be prompted to enter your drexel.edu domain credentials. Please enter your username as either drexel\{abc123} or {abc123}@drexel.edu.

From macOS♯

On a Mac, from Finder, go to the menu bar and select Go → Connect To Server, and type the following depending on where your files are located

smb://files.coe.drexel.edu
smb://researchfiles.coe.drexel.edu smb://projectcollab.coe.drexel.edu

You will be prompted to provide a valid set of drexel.edu domain credentials. If you're logged on to your computer using these credentials, you may not have to do this.

If you are unable to connect using this method, try entering the server location as:

  • Files: smb://DREXEL;{abc123}@files.coe.drexel.edu
  • ResearchFiles: smb://DREXEL;{abc123}@researchfiles.coe.drexel.edu
  • ProjectCollab: smb://DREXEL;{abc123}@projectcollab.coe.drexel.edu

From Linux♯

Because most Linux distros default to using SMB v1 for SMB/CIFS connections when trying to mount automatically via a file manager, you’ll most likely have to drop to a terminal to properly mount a share. If mount.cifs isn’t available, you may have to search your package manager (apt, dnf, pacman, etc.) for cifsutils and install it.

Assuming you want to mount the folder //researchfiles.coe.drexel.edu/data/My Research Folder at ~/researchfiles, try:

mkdir ~/researchfiles
sudo mount.cifs //researchfiles.coe.drexel.edu/data/My\ Research\ Folder/ /mnt/researchfiles -o vers=3.0,user={abc123},dom=drexel,rw

You will need sudo access to be able to mount an SMB share that's not defined in /etc/fstab.

Any spaces in the URI must be escapted with a backslash. vers=3.0 in the options instructs it to use SMBv3. If you’re adding an entry to fstab, you will need to include vers=3.0 there as well. Depending on your distro, you may also need to include uid={abc123},gid=users in the options if you find you don't have the proper file permissions once you've mounted the share.