Computer Systems Lab
Connecting & Supporting the Computer Sciences Department
Research Storage (ResearchDrive)

Research Storage (ResearchDrive)

Provides secure, shareable storage space on the UW–Madison campus network. ResearchDrive is a university-wide file storage solution for Faculty PIs, permanent PIs, and their research group members. It is suited for a variety of research purposes, including backup, archive, storage for data inputs/outputs of research computing and others. It is a secure and permanent place for keeping data.

For more information see the UW ResearchDrive page.

Mounting/Unmounting ResearchDrive in Linux

The UW provided instructions for mounting ResearchDrive will not work on CSL managed Linux computers. Instead, we have alternate methods for mounting via the Desktop or Command Line.

Desktop

  • Open up the “Files” application.
  • Click on “+ Other Locations” on the left panel.
  • At the bottom of the Window, enter smb://research.drive.wisc.edu/<pi netid> into the “Connect to Server” box and press “Connect”.
  • This will pop up a new connection window.
  • For “Connnect As” select “Registered User”.
  • For the Username, enter your UW Net ID.
  • For the Domain, enter AD.WISC.EDU.
  • For the Password, enter your UW Net ID Password.
  • Click the “Connect” button to mount the Research Drive.

This will add the ResearchDrive to the left panel of your Files window with the name <pi netid>@research.drive.wisc.edu. You can click on that to view your ResearchDrive files.

To unmount the ResearchDrive, you can right click on it in the left panel of the “Files” application and choose “Unmount”.

Command Line

If you are working on via the command line and don’t have access to the desktop, you can use the “gio” tool to mount the UW Research Drive.

gio mount smb://research.drive.wisc.edu/<pi netid>
When prompted, enter your NetID username/password and make sure to set the domain to AD.WISC.EDU.

This will mount the research drive to /var/run/user/$UID/gvfs/ in a directory named smb-share:server\=research.drive.wisc.edu,share\=<pi netid>]

You can also find the name of any mounted drives by running the following command: 

gio mount --list

To unmount the UW ResearchDrive, run the following command: 

gio mount -u smb://research.drive.wisc.edu/<pi netid>