Due to the nature of our computer network at PacRes, it’s not possible to back up the entirety of your work computer’s files. Laptops are not always at the office, not every branch is connected to the corporate network right away, and you can’t stay connected to the VPN 24/7. As such, to make sure your files are backed up, you’ll need to keep them in the right places.

1.S Drive

The first place you can keep your files is your S Drive folder. You can access the S Drive by opening PRM Folders on your desktop and then opening the S Drive folder, or you can click on the network drive on the left side of the File Explorer window labeled with your name. Regardless of how you access your S Drive, please be aware that you must be in the office on the corporate network or connected to the VPN to access it.

The S Drive is your personal folder that you can set up however you want. The files you keep here and the folder structure are entirely up to you. The only limitation is that only you can access this folder; you can’t share it with anyone else.

The major benefit of the S Drive is that it’s on the file servers on our corporate network, which means it gets backed up regularly. Any file you store here is protected and can be recovered if lost. Even if you don’t use it regularly, it’s a great idea to copy any important files to the S Drive occasionally to serve as backup copies.

2.OneDrive

Microsoft OneDrive is already installed, running, and connected to your PacRes account on your work computer. Unlike the S Drive, OneDrive doesn’t require a connection to the VPN, although it usually does require an internet connection.

Anything you store in your OneDrive folder is automatically synced to the cloud, where OneDrive for Business stores up to 500 versions of any given file. This means that in most cases, anything you lose from OneDrive can be recovered. As an added bonus, you can share any file stored in OneDrive with anyone else in the company quickly and easily.

To make sure that your OneDrive is connected and syncing, check out this article: How Can I Tell if OneDrive is Syncing?

3.Documents Folder (Thanks to OneDrive)

You can also just keep storing files in your Documents folder as normal… but only because of OneDrive. In addition to everything listed above, OneDrive is also configured to include your Documents folder. This means that you can get the benefits of OneDrive without saving files to a different location.

Ultimately, where you keep your files is up to you. You can use only one of the options above or any combination of the three. Ideally, you probably want to be sticking to your Documents folder, so you always know where everything is while also regularly copying important files to your S Drive. Regardless of how you want to store your files, be sure to stick to the above options so you always have backups.