Best Practices
Users often ask questions about storing and backing up their data, and we often find that some users haven't changed their data storage habits in years. With advances in technology, practices that were routine or even advisable a few years ago may no longer be the best way to guard against data loss. What follows is an introduction to different forms of storage, and some some guidelines for how you can help ensure that you do not lose important data files.
In order to ensure the safety of your data, you should always save a file in at least two different places.
Note: you can backup the settings and files on your Lenovo (IBM) Thinkpad T60 and R60. Click here for instructions on backing up your laptop to DVD.
Hard Drives
Hard drives are very reliable. However, saving your data and files on your computer's hard drive alone does not constitute "backing up" the data. The expected lifetime of most hard drives is at least an order of magnitude longer than it was a decade ago. Barring a power surge or a dropped computer, hard drive failures are relatively rare.
That doesn't mean that due to a software error (from Windows itself, a device driver on the system or another third-party application) that the data on the hard drive can't be corrupted. If bad software (or a bad interaction between pieces of software) gives the drive controller valid commands to write bad data to the hard drive, it's going to pass them to the drive and perhaps damage the file system, causing you to lose files. The file information is also data, like the files themselves.
Computer viruses are an even likelier, more serious threat, that can also wipe out data on your hard drive. They can also damage or delete files on network drives to which you can write or from which you can delete data. (F:, G:, open directories on K:, etc.). Using an anti-virus software program can help you. If you have a Drew-issued laptop or desktop system, the anti-virus software F-Prot is configured to update itself.
Finally, failing to shut your computer down properly can increase the risk of data corruption on a drive.
We recommend you save data to your hard drive and to at least one other location (preferably to your F: drive and USB flash drive ).
Network Drives
Everyone on campus can save data to their own personal drive space (the F: drive - which is accessible when you are logged in on campus). The F: Drive is the first, best place to put a backup copy of all your academic files and data. Files stored on the network storage can be accessed by Windows Explorer, when logged on to the network on campus, or via DocXchanger from off-campus.
Please note that even if you have a file saved to the network, if you leave Word, Excel, etc. running with that document open overnight, that document will not be backed up. Also, if you do not save your document, spreadsheet, data, etc. and we need to do server maintenance (or if a server crashes) and it causes your PC to crash, you could lose the unsaved work. Please save your work and log off or shut down your computer when you are finished working for the night.
Your personal network space is just that - yours. Unless you grant others specific rights, other users cannot access those files. The drive array technology used to store network data is extremely reliable, and we do perform regular backups of network data. However, there are some limitations to the reach of network backups - mostly logistical in nature. The most important thing to remember is the warning above about saving your work and exiting from the application.
There is the ability to "Salvage" the information. However, this feature has a limited time frame, so if you don't realize that you (or another user on a shared network space) deleted the file for some time, it may not be possible to retrieve the file before it is purged by the system to make way for new data.
Flash Drives/Thumb drives
A flash drive (sometimes called a thumb drive) is a small USB memory drive that works like a portable hard drive. When you connect it to a computer, the computer will treat it like an additional drive, and you can save files to it like any other drive. This is the best way to back up your data ( in additon, of course, to using your F: drive).
Flash drives come in various sizes both physically, and terms of capacity. Some flash drives will store up to 256 GB worth of data. Most flash drives are compatible with Windows XP, but may not be compatible with other operating systems. Some flash drives have a write-protection switch the prevents accidental deletion of files on the device. A 4 GB flash drive should be sufficient to store most of your word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation files. If you will be using memory intensive programs like SPSS or ArcGIS and saving those files, you can compress (zip) the larger file formats or invest in an external hard drive.
External Hard Drives
Various vendors make external hard drives. While some of these work quite well, are fast and are high-capacity (some as high as 500 gigabytes or more), they also have limitations. They are larger than flash drives, and therefore not as portable. It is not difficult to find inexpensive external hard drives with great memory capacity. They are considerably more expensive than USB flash drives, however. If you have the money, an external hard drive might be an option for planning to back up all of your data, music, and photos over a number of years.
Don't Forget the Lowly Printout
While we do want to encourage people to conserve paper, a paper backup has some advantages. Most people don't need a computer, a particular software application, or even a particular type of data storage device to read it. We strongly recommend users writing a thesis or dissertation also make printouts. If it's a long enough document to take too much time to retype, you can always use optical character recognition software to scan it back into a computer. While not perfect (page numbering, footnoting and other formatting may have to be redone), a good quality printout can generally be scanned fairly accurately.
