The University’s recommended backup option for faculty is Royal Drive, which you can access either via the web (royaldrive.scranton.edu) or by using a desktop client. Vince Yanusauskas has written up a Quick Start guide for Royal Drive 7.0 (available in PDF format) and also offers regular trainings on Royal Drive for all University faculty and staff members. Royal Drive is secure (files are encrypted), robust (it’s backed up regularly), and is freely available to University faculty. Storage space is initially limited, but you can request more.
There are other options for backup, though many have disadvantages. What some faculty use on campus for backup:
- External hard drive
- CDs/DVDs (warning – the lifespan of CD/DVD media is essentially unknown)
- Thumb drives (same problem as above)
- Third party backup services – like Dropbox, Jungle Disk, Carbonite, etc – though these may involve fees depending on the level of service and amount of space you need
If you’re using an external hard drive, don’t forget that you need to be especially careful if you have sensitive data (e.g., anything covered by FERPA) to store. The University’s Information Security department advises faculty to use full-disk encryption (check out TrueCrypt if your external backup device doesn’t come with full-disk encryption built in).
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