Skip to a section: What is Piratedrive? | Access Piratedrive | Personal folder | Department folder | Data retention & recovery
Available to
Faculty, Staff, Students
What is Piratedrive?
Piratedrive is a campus network attached storage folder available to individual ECU users and departments to store ECU data. Each folder is password-protected, secure and backed up nightly. All disk activities using Piratedrive must conform to the ECU Academic Computer Use Policy and the University Student and Employee Computer Use Regulation.
Commercial use prohibited. Piratedrive may not be used for personal gain, a non-university, for-profit business or to advertise events or items for sale that result in a revenue gain for non-university departments, programs or organizations.
Illegal use prohibited. Illegal uses include, but are not limited to such activities as unauthorized distribution or copying of copyrighted software, fraud and harassment. Files such as illegal MP3s are protected by copyright laws and are strictly forbidden.
Reporting complaints. Complaints relating to the abuse of Piratedrive space should be directed to the IT Service Desk at 252-328-9866.
Access Piratedrive
- On-campus users click the \\piratedrive (U:) drive for personal space. Map a drive (create a shortcut) for a department piratedrive.
- Off-campus users can establish a secure connection using ECU’s Virtual Private Network (VPN). Instructions for establishing a VPN connection can be found on the VPN page.
- Access all Piratedrive folders for which you have access permissions through PiratePort.
- Drag and drop files using an FTP program like FileZilla or Fetch.
Personal Piratedrive
A 5GB Piratedrive folder is created for each new student, staff and faculty when the PirateID account is established. Personal Piratedrive folders are named the same as the user’s PirateID. A shortcut to the personal folder is created when a user logs in to the Intra domain.
While not intended as a back up for an entire workstation, it is required that users store sensitive and critical files in their personal Piratedrive or OneDrive storage folder. Sensitive files should NEVER be saved to your computer.
Users are reminded that Piratedrive folders are for ECU data only. IT Security reserves the right to remove files that do not conform to official university policies.
Faculty and staff who require additional space should enter a Piratedrive service request. Student quotas may be increased if the need is demonstrated and approved. Students requiring space for research projects and other academic functions will be given special consideration.
Department Piratedrive
Departments can request a Piratedrive folder to share files with department members. All department folders require at least two administrators who manage data and user access/permissions.
Data retention and recovery
Piratedrive data is backed up and protected nightly. Backups are retained for fourteen (14) days while mid-day daily backups are retained for seven (7) days. A monthly backup is also retained for three (3) months. These backups allow users to restore files by using the “Previous Versions” tab on their PC.
- Right-click the piratedrive shortcut (“U” drive) in File Explorer.
- Choose Properties.
- Choose the Previous Versions tab.
If assistance is required, please submit the Piratedrive Storage Support service request for help with data recovery.
Please note:
- Departments are responsible for ensuring that data such as PII or research information that has specific retention requirements is either stored on Piratedrive or other acceptable storage arrangement. Backup files are not an acceptable storage solution for research data.
- If data, such as PII or research information, requires storage for more than three months, the department is responsible for making these arrangements.
- Please note that it is the responsibility of the individual user to maintain any HIPAA data for a period of 7 years to conform to HIPAA regulations.