When working in the SCCs, you should save all your work to your Queens drive (Q:). The Queens drive is accessible from outside Queen's via Queen's Online.

What is the Queens drive?
Every Queen's student is allocated personal space on the Queen's network: your Queens drive. This space is completely secure and all files saved here will automatically be backed up. When saving a file on-campus save it to the Queens drive. A big plus is that outside Queen's you can access files on your Queens drive using the Files QDrive link in Queen's Online (QOL). This service is an invaluable way to back up important files for your studies that you store on a computer outside the University.

How do you access the Queens drive outside Queens?
Within QOL click on Files QDrive - this gives you access to Queen's Drive Web Access where you can upload and down your files.

How do you use Queen's Drive Web Access?
This is described in the document Queen's Drive off-campus [PDF].

How reliable are USBs?
USBs can not be considered totally reliable while working at a PC as they will eventually fail so only copy the saved files to the USB when you are about to logoff. Please note that on a USB, applications such as Microsoft Word create a number of temporary files which are only removed when you exit, and, if you are editing directly to a USB, there is a risk that the device will fill and you will lose all the changes that you have made.

Are there any other alternatives?
Yes!!! Although it is recommended that you use your Queens drive to store documents related to your course at Queen’s, you may wish to avail of cloud computing services provided by companies such as Google (Google Apps), Microsoft (Windows Live SkyDrive) or Dropbox to store and share your personal information. As well as providing file sharing and storage, Google Apps and Live SkyDrive provide application software to produce word processed, spread sheets and presentation documents. Other services include discussion forums, email and calendar. For more information go to:  

What is Dropbox? It is described in this 1-page PDF. Dropbox instructions are in this 4-page PDF.