Storage of Files on Network

Introduction:

Managing our collective electronic file cabinets is an ongoing challenge requiring everyone at the College of St. Catherine to make a good faith effort. We have limited storage and personnel resources and like their paper counter parts, servers fill up with old and obsolete files and folders. Students, Faculty and Staff are encouraged to do computer housekeeping at the beginning of each term and regularly throughout the year.

Public Drive Functions:

To be a temporary shared storage area for academic work such as team papers or class assignment resource documents. (Blackboard is the preferred tool here). All of these files will be deleted at the end of the semester and sooner if the drive fills up.
To be shared storage for non-confidential College documents. These are stored permanently until the ‘owners’ delete them.
It must be understood that files stored on the public drive must NOT contain any confidential or irreplaceable information, since everyone at the College can read, modify and delete them.
Use the naming convention for new Folder Name = Login Name; Example: FMLastname, when creating folders on the Public and Department drives. Put the project or function folders underneath the login name of the folder ‘owner’. Example: On the P Drive = public\rccraft\orld 620 or on the W Drive = FinAid\KPGlasser\Excel Reports.

Department Drives Functions:

To be a shared storage area for departmental files for confidential and / or department specific information.
Careful attention must be given to file and folder security and the space managed to eliminate obsolete files. Establishing clear naming conventions and ‘owners’ is important to keeping track of files and folders.

Archiving Guidelines:

Documents older than 1 year archive should be archived to CD or flash drives; Exception, Documents actively viewed (e.g. catalogs, contracts);
Graphics (pictures and video files, especially those now inserted in a Power Point or Word file – those older than 1 month / 1 term, Archive + any file over 5 MB; No Software Applications should be kept on the network drives!

Policy, Procedures & Tools:

Policy: If server is out of disk space or nearly out, Computing Services will back-up and remove older or large files to permit continued use of the server. The departmental owner will be contacted after the procedure.
Tools - Users: We have a site license for the WinZip file compression software. This allows moving files (especially large files, e.g. pub, ppt); into a smaller compressed file with .ZIP extension. Instructions are available from the Help Desk. Winzip is NOT effective on picture files such a JPG’s since they are already compressed.
Tools - Computing Services: We use software called Size Explorer to provide spreadsheets listing the top 100 largest files for each department folder. We ask each department to appoint ‘owners’ for the files and folders and to schedule regular archiving and deletion of files. A procedural guideline is available from the Help Desk.
Backup Procedures: Computing Services backs up file and application servers (such as e-mail) on a daily basis. This includes both the public, departmental and individual account files. They are kept for 1 (one) month only. Any files deleted and not reported within a month CANNOT be recovered.
Local Drives (C Drives) on laptop and desktop PC’s are NOT backed up by Computing Services and are the responsibility of the individual or department.
Use of CD Burners or Flash Drives is recommended for Desktop and Laptop Computers to archive files. ‘U’ Drives for individual files actively in use and Department Drives for Shared documents.
Faculty and Staff personal ‘U’ Drives on ‘\\Cluster’ are limited to 100 MB and / or 1000 files. Lotus Notes often takes 30 MB or more of that space. Quota warning e-mails are sent automatically when quota is exceeded.

DO NOT delete files from the Notes folder. Notes will not function if files are deleted