Network Services Team Tip of the Week - 11/5/2008
Use a Network Drive to Ensure Your Data is Safe!
Widely cited statistics indicate one in five computers will experience total hard drive failure*. It is important that faculty and staff save their files to a network drive rather than the hard drive of their computer. If a file is stored on a computer's hard drive and the file becomes corrupted or the hard drive fails, for the most part the data is gone. SMC’s network drives are backed up nightly. If a file saved to a network drive becomes corrupted, Information Technology Services can retrieve the last "good" backup of the file. If the server where the file resides should encounter a hard drive failure causing data loss, the files contained on the server can be retrieved from the most recent backup.
The most common network drives used by faculty and staff are the F:\, and the X:\ drives.
The X:\ drive. Anything stored here is only accessible by the individual. Each faculty or staff member currently has no limit on the amount of data to be stored on their network drive. Due to increase in drive space usage each individual will be allocated 250 MB’s of storage space on this drive. (The allocated disk space quota will be enforced January 1, 2008) If you need assistance moving important data to media please contact the help desk to schedule a technician to assist you.
The F:\ drive. Anything stored here is accessible by faculty and staff members of the college. The F:\ drive is divided into many subfolders that are managed by department managers respectively. The F:\ drive contains sensitive data that is restricted to folder permissions. (Example: F:\SMERRITT\Data, F:\SMERRITT\Install)
The most important thing to remember about these drives is that they are backed up nightly. This means if a file becomes corrupted or there is a hardware failure on the server storing the file, Information Technology Services can retrieve the last "good" backup of the file.
Information Technology Services, also practices vaulting. Vaulting is backing up data on a removable medium, such as magnetic tape and then delivering the tapes to an off-site location for safekeeping.
Note: Some departments have access to additional drives other than the F:\ , or X:\ drives. These drives are also backed up nightly. Any data stored on SMERRITT is backed up nightly.
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