Piratedrive Storage

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• Personal Piratedrive
• Department Piratedrive
• Administrator Responsibilities
• Data Retention and Recovery
• On-Campus Access
• Off-Campus Access

General Information

Piratedrive is a folder created on the ECU network for data file storage. A Piratedrive folder can be either personal or departmental. Each folder is password-protected, secure and backed up nightly. All disk activities using Piratedrive must conform to the ECU Academic Computer Use Policy and the University Student and Employee Computer Use Policy. These policies apply to all faculty, staff and students utilizing Piratedrive, unless otherwise noted.

Commercial use prohibited. Piratedrive users may not use disk storage for personal gain, for a non-University, for-profit business or to advertise events or items for sale that result in a revenue gain for non-University departments, programs or organizations.

Illegal use prohibited. Illegal uses include, but are not limited to, such activities as unauthorized distribution or copying of copyrighted software, fraud and harassment. Files such as illegal MP3s are protected by copyright laws and are strictly forbidden.

Reporting complaints. Complaints relating to the abuse of Piratedrive space should be directed to the ITCS Help Desk at 252-328-9866.

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Personal Piratedrive

A personal Piratedrive folder is created for each student, staff and faculty when the e-mail account is established. While not intended to back up an entire workstation, it is recommended that users store critical files in their personal Piratedrive folder. Personal Piratedrive folders are 1 GB in size and are named the same as the user’s PirateID.

Users are reminded that Piratedrive folders are not a place to store music, games or executable files (software). Users may be asked to remove non-academic files. If not removed, pending an investigation by IT Security, ITCS reserves the right to remove files that do not conform to official university policies.

Access Your Piratedrive While On Campus

Access a Piratedrive folder through OneStop, on or off campus using either a personal or department computer. Your campus computer will also automatically map a drive (the "U" drive) that you can access through “My Computer” whenever you are logged in to the INTRA domain.

Users can also manually map a drive to the Piratedrive folder while on campus. See these how-to instructions for mapping to a personal or public computer (Windows XP and 7 - Mac users visit the Mac Matrix page for instructions).

Access Your Piratedrive While Off Campus

While off campus, access a Piratedrive folder through OneStop (personal or department computer) or by establishing a secure connection using Cisco Anytime Connect, a Virtual Private Network (VPN) software (department-issued computer only). Visit the VPN website for step-by-step instructions.

Faculty and staff quotas can be increased from 1 GB to 2 GB free of charge. Additional space can be purchased for a one-time fee of $3.20 per GB. Please enter an IT Help Desk service request.

Student quotas may be increased if the need is demonstrated and approved. Students requiring space for research projects and other academic functions will be given special consideration.

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Department Piratedrive

Departments can request a Piratedrive folder to store and share office files. This is convenient when several members must access the same files or the department is storing sensitive information.

The default size of a department’s Piratedrive folder is 5 GB free of charge. More space can be purchased for a one-time fee of $3.20 per GB and is requested through an IT Help Desk service request.

All departmental Piratedrive folders are required to have an administrator to manage the folder and subfolders.

Access a Department Piratedrive

See the instructions in the Personal Piratedrive section to learn how to access a folder while on or off campus.

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Administrator Responsibilities

Each department’s Piratedrive folder is required to have a primary administrator and a backup administrator.

Piratedrive administrators:

• Plan the folder structure
• Maintain documentation of folder administration
• Grant and remove user access
• Choose level of access for users
• Review and modify user access on as-needed basis
• Obtain ITPC approval to store Social Security Numbers
• Obtain IT Security approval of HIPAA data storage measures
• Protect sensitive data

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Data Retention and Recovery

Piratedrive data is backed up nightly with a monthly backup maintained for 3 months. Image snaps, called "Checkpoint," are also taken daily and retained for 7 days. This allows users to restore lost files within a 7-day period by simply mapping a drive to the image folder. If files are lost outside the 7-day window, please submit an IT Help Desk request for recovery.

If data, such as PII or research information, requires storage for more than three months, the department is responsible for making these arrangements.

Please note that it is the responsibility of the individual user to maintain any HIPAA data for a period of 7 years to conform to HIPAA regulations.

For help restoring a lost file, see the pdf tutorial, Recovering Files from Checkpoint.

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On-Campus Access

On-campus users can access their personal Piratedrive through “My Computer” if they are logged in to the Intra domain.

On-campus users can access a departmental Piratedrive by mapping a network drive to the folder. 

Off-Campus Access

Piratedrive files are accessible off-campus through OneStop.

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