File Sharing Services

Unless otherwise noted, provisioning of these file sharing services requires current affiliation with the the Duke School of Law.

NOTE: Please be aware that data of a restricted or highly sensitive nature will likely require extraordinary additional measures to ensure data privacy and safety. General classification and guidelines for data are published on the Duke University IT Security Office, specifically the Duke Data Classification Standard(pdf) provides examples of data by type and respective requirements for the storage and transport of that data.

Law File Share - NAS

Required for use: NETID and Duke network access

Best suited for large groups with many files or files of large size and provides very high performance for frequently changing files.

The networked file share device allows connections to Windows, Mac and Linux computers using common protocols. Files are backed up nightly and retained for 7 days, and provide high performance access to any size data file.

Departmental file shares are available for Faculty and Staff for collaborative sharing of files.

Faculty and Staff are provisioned a user home directory and the drive will be automatically connected to your Duke Law assigned primary desktop or laptop.

Students that participate in Journals will have access to a file storage area for collaborative sharing within that journal.

NOTE: The NAS can only be accessed from on-campus networks, or when the Duke VPN is active from off-campus networks. Please refer to the VPN instruction page for setup instructions.

Duke WebFiles - WebDAV

Required for use: NETID

Best suited for any sized group of Duke persons that share a small number of files that do not change frequently. Additionally, a Duke branded personal web page interface is provided using this storage service.

Duke University central OIT provides every faculty, staff and student a 5GB file storage area that can be accessed from Windows, Mac, Linux and some mobile devices that support the WebDAV protocol.

The WebFiles storage is well documented on the OIT site with setup and usage instructions, please refer to the following location: Duke WebFiles

There is a default 'Public' location on your personal WebFiles area that can be used for publishing data and can be accessed without restrictions. This is called 'Personal Web Space' in the documentation.

Duke Wiki and Duke Sakai

Required for use: NETID

Best suited for large or small group collaborative sharing of a small number of files or pages with frequent updates.

The systems provide versioning of pages but not files. General file storage is provided, Wiki provides only a single set of access control rules, so any authorized users will be able to view the entire workspace. Sakai provides slightly greater flexibility in differentiated access control, specifically designed for level of access (instructor, teaching assistant and student).

Files of moderate size can be uploaded and shared using the system, however there is no means for coordinating multiple users editing the same files.

People not directly affiliated with Duke University can be granted access to these sites, preferably using the NETID affiliate sponsor program.

Dropbox, JungleDisk, Box.NET, Google Docs and other 3rd party services

Required for use: Simple personal registration

Best suited for sharing documents with the general public, ubiquitous access to documents, and collaborative document sharing and editing for small groups.

These services are generally able to storage documents of any format and share them to the public, or a restricted list of people who also have an account with the particular service. There is no limited file versioning and only basic (if any) backup/restore capability.

NOTE: None of these 3rd party file storage services provide strong security at the FREE level of service. Be sure to review and fully understand the limitations of the particular service you would like to use, or contact Academic Technologies if you need assistance in choosing an appropriate service. Additionally, these services do not generally support departmental administration by the Duke Law Academic Technologies and the support that we can offer is severely limited.

In general these services also provide a local file synchronization service that allows a desktop or laptop to send and receive files with the service in the background.

There are typically multiple mobile device options for accessing the data stored in these services and is one of the strongest differentiators compared with more traditional storage services.