Available laboratories
The computer laboratories and applications of several of the University's faculties are accessible via the portal. Some are general computing labs, others are specialized labs dedicated for certain courses. You can refer to your professor or TA to determine which laboratory to use for your needs.
Access to files
Once connected to a laboratory computer, we recommend that you access your files on your personal network space (Z: or H:), because access to these network disks is very efficient.
Although access to the files on your personal computer from the laboratory computer is possible, the performance of this access will be slow. See the next section for more details.
Please note that any files stored on the C: drive of lab computers will be lost when you exit your Windows session or are disconnected. Make sure not to save your documents there and make regular backups.
If the location of your personal network space (H: or Z :) is not available, please send us a request for assistance via the IT Self-Service portal.
File access performance
Some software such as Solidworks requires continuous writing to the file when in use.
The performance of accessing your personal computer's disk drives from the laboratory computer is not efficient and can, with such software, have a very negative impact on overall performance.
For such software, we recommend that you save your files on your university personal network.
How to transfer files between your personal computer and the laboratory computer
Using Windows Explorer
To transfer files from your personal computer to the lab computer - or vice versa, you can launch Windows Explorer from the lab computer. You will have access to the disks on your personal computer as well as your H: network disk, and you will be able to transfer your documents.
Using cloud storage (OneDrive)
As an alternative, you can also install a Microsoft OneDrive client on the laboratory computer. To synchronize your work files with OneDrive, see the Tools and Resources section on the Student Zone page. Note that you will need to reinstall the client at every session.