Choosing where to store your digital files, whether they’re Word documents, pictures, music files, databases, or something else, is a process of balancing the need for access from multiple locations, security, and the need to share the files with other people. Files stored in the cloud are easily accessible from anywhere in the world and on a wide variety of devices, but may be less secure than files stored in the on-campus file shares managed by ITS. Additional information can be found in the knowledge base about Drive and Dropbox.
Getting Started
Google Drive is one of many ‘apps’ provided for free to the higher education community by Google. Files stored in Google Drive are available via the web on any device with a web browser, and via dedicated apps on computers running MacOS X and Windows, as well as on iPads, iPhones, Android phones and tablets, and Windows phones. To sign in to Google with your Carleton username and password, visit Carleton Google Drive Login.
More Info
- If you have a personal Google account in addition to the one provided by Carleton, it can be tricky to manage which account has access to which files. The easiest ways to avoid issues are to either sign out of any other Google account before signing in your Carleton credentials, or to use different web browsers for each account (e.g. sign in to Google Drive with your personal account in Firefox, and with your Carleton account in Chrome).
- Carleton accounts in Google are populated once a day by an automated process. Most issues are fixed overnight. If you’ve been unable to sign in for more than a day, but your password works with other Carleton services (like email), please contact the ITS Helpdesk at x5999 for help.
If you are an employee of the College, check with your supervisor or department head before using a cloud service to store College data.
Questions?
Please contact the ITS Helpdesk at x5999 for assistance with any file share-related inquiries.