How do I use drive modes in Virtual machines?

Principle

Drive modes determine how a drive is attached to a VM, edited, shared or deleted.

Read-only mode

Each Virtual machine is usually attached to a drive-in read-only mode for all users apart from the drive owner; which conveys default access to the drive.

Drives may be shared in read-only mode with other users. When you add a user to a virtual machine, the drive attached to the respective VM is automatically shared in the read-only mode.

Read-write mode

Read-write mode is more sensitive and should only exist between drive owners. For good practice, there should be two drive owners per drive if one has to go on a holiday or leave the organization. The other one can set up the drive appropriately.

• Read-write mode may be conducted during a drive back-up process.

• Read-write mode allows significant options such as unshare drive from everyone else (which makes you the sole user with access to the drive) and delete drive (which permanently deletes the drive and its contents).

note

A user who shared the drive in read-write mode can further share the drive in read-write mode with other users.

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Creating Drives and Attaching them to the Virtual Machine

Read-only	Read-write
User can add files.	User can take ownership of the drive files.
User can view the files.	User can edit the files.

Editing Drives

Read-only	Read-write
User cannot make any edits to the drive.	User can edit the drive.
User can bulk email other drive users.	User can rename the drive.
User cannot access project tags in the drive.	The User can change the project tag in the drive.
User cannot classify projects in the drive.	User can classify and declassify projects in the drive.

Sharing Drives

Read-only	Read-write
User can share the drive in read-only mode.	User can share the drive in both read-only and read-write mode.
User cannot unshare the drive.	User can unshare the drive with everyone else.
User cannot edit drive ownership.	User can directly transfer ownership of the drive.

Practice

Drive modes only apply when a drive is shared with a user.

To share a drive using the above modes navigate to the tab in the section.

• Select the drive you would like to share.
• Click the Share icon located in the top right corner.
• Type the name of the users/groups you want to share the drive with.
• Select either the read-only or read-write mode.
• Click .

Optionally follow the instructions from the share a drive section.

tip

To learn more about drive modes navigate to the drive modes section.