No one should rely on any one storage device for their data. Always keep your files in multiple locations, including usb thumbdrives, CD or DVD, external hard drives, and other mediums.

Lethbridge College students have access to their internal college “Z” drives, which offer 750MB of space, but students should save their data on portable drives as well, to minimize the risk of data loss, says Dean Johnson, manager of network services at Lethbridge College.

“Don’t rely on any one thing,” says Johnson. “Use online storage services such as Google or Windows Skydrive.”

Online storage services, including Box.net, allow students to access their files from anywhere with an internet connection. The storage services double as a back-up location for those irreplaceable files.

There are online services dedicated to automatically backing up your files via a small program you install on your computer. Two examples are Carbonite.com, $40 per year, and Mozy.com, $4.95 per month. Either provides incredible peace of mind, and are automatic, so you don’t have to think about it.

With Carbonite and Mozy, they backup all the files you have selected the first time, which takes a while, but only backup the files that have been changed or updated after that.

Another benefit of storing your data online is you can access it from anywhere, as opposed to “Z” drives, which are only accessible on college campus.

Keep data in multiple places in case something happens to one of the sources, so in the case of a hard drive failure, loss of a usb thumbdrive, or a fire, you’re not at a loss, or forced to recreate a report or essay you spent hours or days on.

The college does not keep back-ups of the student “Z” drive, so it’s important not to rely on it as the only storage source, Johnson says.

Information Technology Services doesn’t monitor the data either, though it does monitor quotas automatically.

Student receive an automated email if they go over the allotted 750MB to alert them they need to reduce the number of files they have stored.

However, for Communication Arts and Multimedia in particular, that space fills up very fast, which is why students are encouraged to use external hard drives for their recorded video and graphics work.

“Keep your data on your person,” says Johnson, referring to portable storage.

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Originally posted 2008-10-09 17:22:53. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

“I use Google for all of my Word documents most of the time, like all of the Microsoft Office projects I have to work on at home and in school, I just work on them from [Google’s websites], so I can work on them from wherever. Sometimes, I feel more confident in using the program itself from Microsoft on my computers, then I’ll upload it to Google, then when I come here, I do the same thing,” says Douglas Mutai, a second-year marketing student.

Web-based applications, such as Google Docs, or G-Mail, operate completely on Google’s massive servers across the world, allowing anyone with an internet connection from anywhere, which is most people now, to access and modify common file formats.

“I use it when I’m at a computer that doesn’t have Office on it, for example. Google is really good for viewing Excel spreadsheets and Word documents. Like, with an iPod Touch for example,” says Neil Smith, a circulation assistance in the library at Lethbridge College, who also helps out in the Computer Commons.

Using services like Carbonite.com or GetDropBox.com to automatically backup and sync files over the internet and across different computers can be a huge benefit to those who don’t want to worry about manually creating backups or remembering to email themselves important documents.

“While there are some early adopters and some other pockets of people using these tools, we (technology enthusiasts) are still in the minority. When you put this in the context of blogging being around since 1999-2000 we need to be honest that our adoption rates with technology are relatively slow,” says Dwayne Harapnuik, educational technology manager at Lethbridge College.

For the paranoid types, keeping data stored in multiple locations is usually the way to go.

“Web based stuff is available from anywhere on anything (Mac, pc, pda,
etc.), which makes it is very accessible,” says Dean Johnson, manager of network services at Lethbridge College.

Johnson also suggests keeping a backup of your data somewhere you can access it that doesn’t require an internet connection.

Harapnuik says that that internet-based backup services are the safest place for data, but until high-speed wireless internet is accessible anywhere, it’s really only useful as a backup.

“We believe the Web/Cloud is the safest place for our data. It is good to have a copy of your content on the LAN as a backup to web access–but really only a backup. Once 3G, 4G and/or WiMax networks take off you will have wireless access from any area of an urban centre,” says Harapnuik.

“There are a lot of cloud (aka web-based) applications being used for maintaining documents across multiple computers,” says Smith.

Smith says that one of the issues for him about Google Docs is he doesn’t feel it’s matured enough where it’s useful for mainstream purposes.

“[Google Docs] hasn’t really matured to the point that it’s become useful for mainstream applications,” says Smith. “I’d imagine it’s probably very good for group projects and stuff like that. It allows people to collaborate really easily.”

Originally posted 2009-03-29 19:19:37. Republished by Blog Post Promoter