Information Technology

File Storage

Engineering File Storage Options

The College of Engineering provides several types of network accessible storage.  All Engineering users (students, faculty, and staff) along with non-majors enrolled in Engineering courses are given home directory storage.  Student home directories have a quota of 5GB.  Students also have access to 10GB of additional storage called the "work directory".

In addition, we provide team storage for classes, Engineering groups, and project teams.

Finally, access to central ISU AFS storage is also available.

Engineering Home Directories

All students, faculty, and staff in the College of Engineering are provided with an Engineering home directory for storing data.  Likewise,  all systems in the College of Engineering are configured to use your Engineering home directory when you log in.  The home directory is the same whether you are logging in via Windows or Linux. 

The server on which your home directory is located differs whether you are a student or a faculty/staff member.

For on-campus students who wish to access their Engineering home directory:

For all on-campus Engineering students, you can access your Engineering home directory from a Windows computer (such as your laptop) using these steps:

  1. Click the start button, select "Run..."
  2. In the "Open:" field, enter \\files.engineering.iastate.edu\HOME.
  3. Click "OK".
  4. Enter your ISU NetID and password into the dialog box that pops up asking for logon information.
  5. Your home directory will appear.

To access your Engineering home directory from a UNIX or Linux computer:

  1. Open a command shell.
  2. Run: "sftp home.eng.iastate.edu"
  3. Login using your ISU NetID and password

To access your home directory from an off-campus Windows machine:

  1. Download WinSCP if you don't already have it.
  2. Fill in "home.eng.iastate.edu" for the hostname.
  3. Fill in your ISU NetID and password for the User name and password.
  4. Click Login.
  5. If it presents a warning like "The server's host key was not found in the cache.", click Yes to add the key to your local key cache.
  6. You will be presented with a familiar FTP-like interface.

Alternately, you can follow these directions to set up a "My Network Place" to your Engineering file storage space.

Engineering Work Directory

The Work directory

In addition to your home directory, each junior, senior, or graduate student Engineering student has access to 10Gb of storage called the "work directory".  This storage is intended for larger data output from programs such as Matlab, Fluent, Cadence, or Abaqus.  Note, if you are a freshman or sophomore and need access to the larger data set, just send a request and we'll create a work directory for you.

Accessing your work directory from Windows

  1. In the Run prompt, enter:
    \\thumper.engineering.iastate.edu\work

Accessing your work directory from Linux

  1.  cd /work/{username}
    where {username} is your ISUNetID

Using your work directory

To use your work directory for storing output from programs such as Matlab, Abaqus, etc. you should direct the application to send output data to a location in your work directory. Storing large data sets in your work directory instead of your home directory helps prevent your home directory storage (5GB) from being exceeded.

ISU NetID AFS Filespace

Official instructions from ITS for accessing your ISU NetID AFS file storage space can be found here.

Alternately, if you would like to be able to copy files back and forth without installing the AFS client, you can use WinSCP to access your AFS file space.

Once you have WinSCP installed, you can access your file space with these settings:

Click "Login".

You should now be able to copy files to and from your AFS file space.

Engineering Scratch Space

Part of the Engineering file storage system includes "scratch" space for all users. This space is generally uncontrolled, but it is monitored for abuse and misuse.

Here are the groundrules for the scratch space:

  • Educational purposes only (coursework related, etc.).
  • Soft quota limit of 4GB per user.
  • Scratch space is not backed up. Keep important things in your home directory (U: drive).
  • Don't mess with other people's stuff.

To connect to your personal scratch space, read this.

To connect to the shared scratch space, read this.

Problems connecting to file storage

If you are having troubles connecting to any of the different file storage locations, you may need to change the security settings on your computer to match those of our servers. To do this, please download the NTLMv2 fix (right click > save as) and save it to your desktop. After you extract the zip file (right click > extract in Windows), double click the file and select yes when prompted to update the registry. After doing this, please reboot your computer. If you still have trouble connecting, please contact support.