Frequently Asked Questions

Please take the time to review each of these QA items. Each contains in-depth information about the SwissDisk service. If you have any questions or require additional information, please contact our Customer Support Center.

• I use Windows and the Web Folder feature to access my SwissDisk, why can I not open and save files directly back to my SwissDisk?
• What do I need to edit files on my SwissDisk account?
• How can I easily transfer files from my computer to my SwissDisk?
• I'm a traveling professional, how can I access my SwissDisk using my Smartphone, PDA or Handheld Computer?
• How can I use SwissDisk to backup and protect the critical files from my computer?
• Why does my disk "free space" not show as the total of what I purchased?
• What is the "lost+found" folder, and why can I not remove it?
• I have some files in "lost+found", what do I do with them?
• After uploading files with Mac OSX, I see duplicates of the file names with a "._" appended to it, and also a ._DStore file. What are they?

Q: I use Windows and the Web Folder feature to access my SwissDisk, why can I not open and save files directly back to my SwissDisk?

A: Web Folders does not allow you to open a file, edit and then save automatically back to your SwissDisk storage space. It does however let you copy files via the Windows OS, to your local hard drive, edit them, and then copy them back. If you would like to edit with files directly as they reside on your SwissDisk account in Windows, please read our supporting how to article.

Q: What do I need to edit files on my SwissDisk account?

A: It is important to remember that SwissDisk is an encrypted storage solution company. Whereby we provide access to encrypted drive space and not the software to edit/work with what every files you may store there. For instance, if you store Word documents on your SwissDisk, we provide accessibility to them, but you would need software from a 3rd part to edit the documents.

Q: How can I easily transfer files from my desktop computer to my SwissDisk?

A: There are numerous ways to transfer files to and from your encrypted online storage with SwissDisk. Please read our supporting how to articles on your particular operating system and intended interest of use.

Q: I'm a traveling professional, how can I access my SwissDisk using my Smartphone, PDA or Handheld Computer?

A: Accessing your SwissDisk account with a handheld device is as easy as launching your mobile browser and going to SwissDisk.com. All of your files on your encrypted storage will be available to you via our web interface after you log into your account. To learn more about the web interface, read our supporting how to article.

Q: How can I use SwissDisk to backup and protect the critical files from my computer?

A: Accessing your SwissDisk as a shared volume or network place will allow you to use any number of backup applications to move important files from your computer to your SwissDisk account. So although possible, we cannot detail the numerous ways this could be done. Instead, please refer to your backup software's documentation and our own how to articles for information about using your SwissDisk as a volume or network place.

Q: Why does my disk "free space" not show as the total of what I purchased?

A: When you purchase space on our server, you are buying actual hard disk space on our hardware. That space is then initialized into a filesystem (encrypted). All types of filesystems (even those on your computer) incur some overhead on the space on the hard disk. That space is used to organize the files on the actual hard drive. This overhead is seen as a "loss" of actual space available for files. So physically on the hard drive, you have the total amount of space allocated.

This is also true on a hard drive that you purchase for your home computer. You may buy a 20 Gigabyte hard drive, only to find that you can only store 18Gigabytes of files to the disk. However, unlike hard drive storage, we do not advertise Gigabytes and Megabytes as base 1000, but in fact use the standard base 1024 storage calculations (which means you actually have more space that what you would expect from a hard drive manufacturer).

Q: What is the "lost+found" folder, and why can I not remove it?

A: The "lost+found" folder is part of your disk filesystem. When your filesystem was created, this folder was created with it. Just like any filesystem (even the one on your computer), your SwissDisk filesystem must be checked for errors periodically. This is generally done when your filesystem is unmounted (either manually by you, or after a short period of inactivity).

In the unlikely event that the filesystem contains errors, "lost" files will be placed in this directory. A lost file can occur when you are uploading, or have recently uploaded a file, and the storage system either crashes, or power is lost.

Neither of these events is ever likely. Given our power backups systems, and stability of the equipment, you will probably never see any files end up in this directory. It is there as a failsafe, just in case of these unlikely events.

Q: I have some files in "lost+found", what do I do with them?

A: Those are files saved from your filesystem. The names of the files represent the location of the file as it is on the hard drive. Since they were "lost", the actual filename was not retrieved. You will have to inspect the files manually to determine what file it used to be.

Usually you can tell this by the size and date of the file and a bit of familiarity with what files you had on your storage space. Checking to see what files are missing from your storage space is usually a good starting point. You can also try renaming the files with a .txt extension, and opening them in a good text editor (WordPad on Windows, or TextEdit on Mac OS X) to see if you can recognize the file from its contents.

Q: After uploading files with Mac OS X, I see duplicates of the file names with a "._" appended to it, and also a ._DStore file. What are they?

A: Mac OS X has a different way of storing files. Files are split into a "Resource" and a "Data" fork. Simply speaking, each file on Mac OS is really two files, depending on what the actual file is. For example, an application is mostly a "Resource" fork, while a word processing document is mostly a "Data" fork. The resource fork can contain information like the icon, "Label" and other metadata. Since the WebDAV storage space is flat (IOW, it cannot contain dual-forked files), Mac OS X stores them as two separate files. The file with the leading "._" is the resource fork.

If you are transferring data between two systems, one Mac OS X, and the other not, you generally want to use the main file. Doing this, one can share and manipulate a Word document across both systems without problems.

The ._DStore file is a folder resource fork. It contains information about the directory, like a custom directory icon, placement of icons in the folder when you view it in the finder, etc. Deleting this file will not cause harm to your directory, but it will be recreated once you access it again from Mac OS X.