Your Home Directory, M:
Your home directory is your personal storage area at the UiO. It is used, among other things, for personal files and setup files for various software. Your home directory should not be used for storing documents that should be accessible to others. Documents that should be available to others can be placed on shared volumes, areas on the UiO website, or on OneDrive / Google Drive or another site approved for storage of the type of data the document contains.
Shared volumes
Shared volumes are created for a group of people that need to share data and documents. If you are working on a project, report or something similar it is often useful to store these files on a shared volume. In this way everyone can update the files at the same time and one can control read and write access. Most likely your department already has created some shared volumes for this purpose, if not contact your local IT-support. One can also limit access to these files by setting the correct permissions on the file. Please note that sensitive data must not be stored on shared volumes. If you are unsure how to assess the type of data you have (if it is sensitive or not), contact your manager or professor.
Storage of research data
How research data can and should be stored depends upon what kind of data it is. Your research data can be stored on your home directory or on shared volumes. All researchers at UiO can request up to 1TB more space for there home directory. UiO also has solutions for especially large amounts of data, sensitive data and other special needs that go with supercomputing.
The UiO website
The UiO website should be used primarily for publishing and not for storage. But nevertheless, the site can be used for your work documents, minutes to your meetings, other administrative documents that need to be easily accessible to many. What is important to keep in mind is that everything on this site can potentially be open to the world and that means that it can be searchable for Google. It is therefore important that you consider what you want to put on UiO’s website. Always check that the correct access levels are set before publishing. If you are unsure about using the website or what type of security level your documentation is, contact your manager, professor or departments web editor before posting.
What should I use the hard drive on my PC for?
UiO PC standard setup for the hard drive (/C:-disk /D:-disk) is meant for software and other system files. Do not store documents on the hard drive of your UiO PC, local hard drives are not backed up. If the hard drive breaks or the PC is stolen, your documents will be lost.
Personal documents
Personal documents and files are best stored at home, cf. section 3.3 of the IT regulations.
What about DropBox, Google Drive and Cloud Services?
For storing UiO related informastion, the UiO recommends that you use the UiO storage solutions and services where you can log in with your UiO username and password