Accessing files on a local network file server - BEST PRACTICE?

[Paul Dupuis]

This question may have an obvious answer, but I am brain dead today, so 
here goes:

I have a app installed with some customers in a Windows network 
environment. They have all their laptops set so that their Home 
directories are on a local network server.

So, where as on a local laptop, specialFolderPath("documents") might 
return "C:/Users/<username>/Documents" as the path, for them 
specialFolderPath("documents") returns something like 
"//s1.somedomain.com/mountPoint/<username>/Documents"

We save a number of folders and files in the user's Documents folder. In 
some cases, if the file is not present (i.e. if there is a file tFile is 
false) we regenerate the file from a default.

Sometime, the server is offline or the user is disconnected from the 
network.

What is a good way to differentiate between:

1) one of these files is not present so must be regenerated, i.e

if there is not a file (specialFolderPath("documents")&slash&tFilename) then
   -- regenerate the file tFile at location specialFolderPath("documents")

Versus

2) The Server (//s1.somedomain.com/ is disconnected to down?

So that in case (1) , we regenerate the file and in case (2) we present 
a warning that the server is disconnected or down?

Mu gut says this should be simple, but I just can not wrap my brain 
around it today.