File Storage Options

File Servers | Removable Storage | Fixed Storage | Laptops

The volume of computer storage needed by students, faculty and staff grows every year. The problem of where to store files comes up again and again. There are a number of options available to meet the needs of the UW-RF community.

File Servers

UW-RF file servers offer very reliable data storage that is accessible from most locations on campus, but access from off-campus may be limited.

For students, faculty, and staff, DoTS provides FalconFile . As with other servers, storage space is limited and it's a shared resource, so careful file management is important.

For faculty, staff and students who work with or take classes in the Geography department relating to geographic information systems, the GISFS fileserver provides space to meet the data storage needs of the specialized applications used in that field.

Removable Storage

If you need portability, there are a few options available to you, each with their pros and cons.

Zip disks and floppy disks have been around for many years. While offering a high degree of portability, they also have a short lifespan. These media may not provide reliable storage beyond a year and should definitely not be trusted as the only form of storage for important data.

USB flash drives are becoming the most popular portable storage device. In addition to a high degree of portability, they offer good reliability.

CD-R/W and DVD+/-RW disks are the preferred storage method for backup and archiving data. They are also a good way to store documents which are not used frequently. If you have files which are used once a year or less, or files that rarely need to be changed, consider writing them to CD or DVD and removing them from server space (if they're stored on a server).

Follow this link for more information on portable data storage.

Fixed Storage (Hard Disks)

For faculty and staff who work with video and other data which take up many gigabytes of space, a local hard drive (fixed storage) is still the only option available. Regardless of whether the hard disk drive is the only storage available, care should be taken to back up important data regularly, since failures of local hard drives can and do occur.

Laptops

Laptops present many challenges to their owners. Among them is how to keep your data safe and yet at the same time portable. Laptops are often set up to store their data primarily on the laptop's local hard disk. While this ensures the data is available anytime your laptop needs it, there is a risk that the data could be lost due to hardware failure or theft. Therefore, it is important that you regularly back up data from your laptop to a file server or writeable optical disk (CD-R/W).

Drives for portability
More file management information