Summary
This article will go over some of the options to save your work when using a computer from a computing cluster, technology classroom, or departmental lab. It will also go over some of the pros and cons of these options.
Content
Whether you are new to the Clusters or returning, please take a minute to review the information below about saving your work.
Read now and keep from losing your hard work!!!!
Student and staff users of the Student Computing Clusters, technology classrooms, and departmental labs manage by Academic Technology have a range of options for where to save your work. In order of preference, here's our recommendations:
- OneDrive
- Personal USB drives
- Local hard drive
The upsides and downsides of each are below.
OneDrive
UNH provides the OneDrive online storage service to all UNH students and staff. For more general information on OneDrive, see Microsoft Onedrive and other KB articles.
| + 1 TB of online storage |
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| + Accessible from anywhere on or off campus |
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| + Available from all platforms and mobile devices |
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| + Automatically mounts on Cluster Windows Computers |
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| + Accessible from anywhere on or off campus |
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| + Versioning |
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| + Easy to open Office documents |
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| + Easy to share and collaborate with others |
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Personal USB drives
Most everyone has a USB drive around and they are easy to use in the Clusters. Just plug it in and go!
| + Easy to use |
- Easy to lose or forget |
| + You can carry it with you and use it wherever you are |
- No backup |
| + Useable across multiple computer platforms |
- Usually not secure |
| |
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Local hard drive
You can save to the local hard drive of the computer you are currently using, but that's generally a poor choice. Use this only as a last resort or for temporary files you do not care about having later.
Note: If you save to Desktop or Documents, you are saving to the local hard drive and all of these downsides apply!
| + Easy to use |
- You only have access to your files on that one computer |
| + Plenty of storage space |
- Your files will get deleted after a week or so |
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- Your files may get deleted even sooner due to maintenance needs or system problems |
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- No backup |
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- Not very secure |
If you have questions about these, the staff at the AT Support Center in Dimond Library can assist. You can access them at their desk or by using the chat support at clusters.unh.edu/help.