The secure, centralized file servers maintained by HMS IT are backed up nightly. Storing your personal and departmental documents on our servers protects them from data loss when keeping files on computer hard drives.

File servers maintained by HMS IT are secure for storing up to level 3 information.

Shared departmental folders

  • Folders that you share with colleagues within your department.
  • Anyone can create a shared departmental folder and designate who can manage the folder and who has access to the folder.
  • If you want access to an existing shared folder, you must have the manager or owner of the folder grant you access.

Shared network collaboration folders

Harvard Medical School's online storage lets you work with and share your documents and files with colleagues from any computer connected to the internet.

Collaboration folders

  • Are created to share documents with individuals in your workgroup and members of other departments.
  • Must have at least two co-owners who can add, edit, and remove files and grant additional user access.
  • Similar to shared departmental folders, these collaboration folders allow you to share files with colleagues OUTSIDE of your department.
  • Anyone can create a shared departmental folder and designate who can manage the folder and who has access to the folder.
  • If you want access to an existing shared folder, you must have the manager or owner of the folder grant you access.

Learn more about file sharing and secure file transfer.

Home folders

Network home folders are accessible and visible only to you. This folder’s path is home.files.med.harvard.edu/hms ID. It is often referred to as home.files and is sometimes mounted as the M: drive in Windows.

Home folder quotas

Staff and Faculty

50 GB

Students

2 GB

Affiliates

150 MB

Windows servers

HMS IT provides professionally-managed Windows servers for Harvard Medical School academic, research, and administrative units.

The HMS IT Enterprise Services Team can assist with Windows servers on infrastructure such as:

  • VMware
  • Azure cloud services
  • AWS cloud services

This service includes setup, monitoring, monthly patching, backup, and full operating system support.

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