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Watershed (W: Drive): a Shared Network Folder

"Watershed" is a campus network folder open to all employees with Capitan accounts AND students with Discovery accounts. Watershed is normally mapped to the drive letter W: on campus computers and automatically connected to your Capitan or Discovery account when you log in to a campus computer.

Anyone with a Capitan or Discovery (student) account can save a file in Watershed.  Anyone with a Capitan (employee) or Discovery (student) account can copy that file, read, edit or delete it. Watershed is a TEMPORARY file storage space: files on Watershed are deleted every weekend.

Examples of Watershed use are:

  • An instructor in a computer lab might want to share a file with the class.
  • Students working on different computers who want to share a file.

There are two security models for Watershed:

  1. Files placed in the root of Watershed are accessible to all. There is no file security set at this level. This location should be used for file distribution and sharing.
  2. Sub-folders created in Watershed, and the files saved within them, are accessible only to the account that created the folder. Creation and use of a folder is recommended if you want your files to remain confidential.

If you are not automatically connected to Watershed (i.e. if Watershed is not mapped to the W: drive on your computer when you log in), you can connect to it manually by following these steps:

  1. Right click on the My Computer icon on your desktop
  2. Click on Map Network Drive...
  3. From the "Drive:" drop-down list, select any drive letter not in use (we suggest W: for Watershed).
  4. In the "Folder:" field, type \\discovery\watershed (you must type it exactly as shown).
  5. Check the box next to "Reconnect at logon" if you want this mapped drive to be available every time you log on.
  6. In My Computer or Explorer you should now see a new drive. Remember, files on Watershed will be deleted every weekend.

To access Watershed from Macintosh computers running OS X, open the GO menu, click on "Connect to Server", then type:

smb://discovery.mala.bc.ca/watershed

...into the address field. Then click "Connect".

( If that fails, then use smb://dolphin.discovery.mala.bc.ca/watershed )

You will be asked for a username and password. Enter your Capitan (Employee) or Discovery (Student) Network Account username and password here.

Now you will see a network icon called "Watershed" on your desktop. You can open files from here by double-clicking on them, and save files here by dragging and dropping them from the Finder into the network window.