Moving Data from My File Share on a Local SMU Server to My O365 OneDrive

Overview

SMU is retiring the old and unsupported service used in the past for faculty, staff, and students to store their SMU-related personal data, and your help to get this done is appreciated. The drive location commonly known as the “J: drive” as seen in File Explorer in Windows will eventually disappear. Your assistance is required to move your data from your J: drive to your OneDrive space in your SMU Office 365 cloud account.

The steps below are broken into three sections to allow you to start at the step in the data moving process which is unfamiliar to you. Section A is how to open your OneDrive space, Section B is to help you prepare for moving your data, and Section C explains how to upload your data to your OneDrive cloud storage space.

You will need to be on campus using an SMU computer that is not in the library or Atrium to perform this work.

Please refer to the KB Article “Logging into portal.office.com” if you need help logging in and ensuring you are logged into your SMU-provided Office 365 account.

Section A: Open Your OneDrive

1. Click the 9 dotted squares icon in the upper left corner as pointed to by the top green arrow in Figure A.1.

   
   Figure A. 1

2. Click on OneDrive in the drop-down menu as shown by the pointed lower green arrow in Figure A.1.

3. Move the pointer to the left side of the screen under the “Add new” button and scroll to the bottom of the menu to reveal the amount of storage in use in your OneDrive and the total available. As shown by the green arrow in Figure A.2, there is 464.2 GB (Gigabyte) used of the 1 TB (Terabyte) available.

   
   Figure A. 2
   • For our purposes, we use 1 TB = 1,000 GB. Anything less than 1 GB (such as MB for Megabyte, KB for Kilobyte, or B for Bytes) will be rounded to 1 GB.
   • Subtracting 464.2 GB from 1000 GB leaves 535.8 GB available for data to be moved from the J: drive and future storage of new data.
   • Take note of the available space as it will be needed before starting the data move.

Section B: Preparing to Move Your Data

1. In the OneDrive Window:

   • Under the “Add New” button, scroll back to the top.

   • Click on My Files.

   • Click on Add New.

     
     Figure B. 1

   • Select Folder from the drop-down menu.

     
     Figure B. 2

   • Add a name for the folder, such as OldFileShares, and click Create.

     
     Figure B. 3

   • Click on the new folder you created which should be at the top of the My Files folders and files list.

     
     Figure B. 4

   • Resize the window to half your screen or move it to another monitor if you have more than one monitor.

2. In File Explorer:

   • Open File Explorer by pressing the Windows logo key + E.

     

     Figure B.5

   • Resize the window to the other half of your screen.

     

     Figure B.6

   • Click on the arrow next to Desktop. (Figure B.6-1)

   • Click on This PC (Figure B.6-2) to display the “Devices and Drives” and “Network Locations”. You may need to click on the arrow next to “Network Locations” to expand it.

   • If a drive labelled as your S# does not appear, you can try running the utility to map it; otherwise, you will need to contact the EIT help desk at hdesk@smu.ca. Tell the help desk you are trying to access your J drive in Windows Explorer and not seeing it.

     • Open the Run Command by pressing the Windows logo key + R.
     • Enter \\smunet\NETLOGON\kix32.exe in the Open box and click OK.
     • A black window should pop up, run some commands, and then go away.
     • You may need to reopen the Windows Explorer window by closing it and following step 2.i above.

   • Hover over the network location for your S# (your J drive Figure B.6.4) and make sure the space used (subtract space free from total size) is less than what was calculated in A.3. Please try cleaning up your files if there is not enough space. Contact the EIT help desk (hdesk@smu.ca) if you still need more room. Request more OneDrive space, the amount you need, and indicate it is needed to move your data from your J drive to your OneDrive.

   • If you want to access the files in SharePoint or Teams from Windows Explorer, then the path and file name to any file cannot exceed 240 characters. No message will pop up during the copy, but you will not see the file in Windows Explorer. Teams and SharePoint cannot handle files with paths longer than 400 characters. A message will pop up saying the file will not copy. If possible, we advise shortening subfolder names and file names on any file with a long path name at this point. See the KB article "How to Find Long Path and File Names".

Section C: Moving Your Data

1. Click on your S# (J) drive in the Windows File Explorer then drag and drop it into the grey area under My Files > OldFileShares (or whatever you called the folder). A new subdirectory called J drive should show up which has all your data in it.

   

   Figure C.1

   

   Figure C.2

2. You should randomly check the files in your J drive with the ones in OneDrive. EIT will be removing the old J drives, but you will have a window of time to work with the data and compare. The dates on when the data is going away will be announced.