Over the past few months, the Office of Technology Services (OTS) has worked with clients who have lost data on hard drives as well as the newer keychain-style USB drives (also called Thumb Drives or Flash Drives). Please use the following information to safeguard against data loss.
Data on a computer’s hard drive can be lost in many ways: mechanical failure, viruses, theft and power surges. In fact, several of OTS’ own computers were literally “fried” recently as a result of a ground fault in the building wiring that sent 220 volts through 110 volt outlets; even the surge suppressers didn’t protect them. USB drives are prone to the same loss scenarios as hard drives, plus two others: they are easily lost and damaged.
In some cases, OTS has been able to recover data, while in other cases, the data was permanently lost. When the data loss is beyond the capability of in-house software tools, it may even be necessary to contract with a third-party vendor that specializes in forensic data recovery?-a very expensive prospect.
To guard against data loss happening to you, we would like to take this opportunity to remind all faculty and staff of the importance of having a current backup of your important documents and files. The easiest way to do this is to use your “H:” drive (personal) and “O:” drive (departmental) to store your files. See {http://wwwnew.towson.edu/adminfinance/ots/coretechsecurity/accttowsonu.asp}.
Eight great reasons to use your network H: and O: drives include:
1. OTS automatically backs up H: and O: drives nightly and saves the backups for 28 days. During that time, a client with lost data can request a restoration of the file by providing the name and folder in which it was saved.
2. Files are protected from physical damage or theft. If the computer is damaged or stolen, the files won’t be lost, since they won’t be on that computer’s hard drive.
3. If a virus attacks your computer and erases the hard drive’s contents, your files will be safe since they’re on a network file server. In the event those would be affected, the OTS-provided backups would be available.
4. Sensitive or confidential documents are often better protected on the H: drive (your personal drive), since access requires your TowsonU login. Just about anyone, with a little malice and software from the Internet, can “crack” into a desktop computer system and get to the files on its hard drive.
5. Your files on your H: and O: drives will be available whenever you logon to an on-campus computer that’s on the TowsonU domain, so you’ll never need to carry around Zip disks, floppy disks…or even USB drives.
6. You can get to your files on your H: and O: from off campus easily through Citrix with a Web browser as well as with our newer Virtual Private Network (VPN). See {http://wwwnew.towson.edu/adminfinance/ots/coretechsecurity/emailcitrix.asp} and {http://wwwnew.towson.edu/adminfinance/ots/coretechsecurity/infosecvpn.asp} for more information.
7. You can use your H: or O: drive, as appropriate, to make your own backups of your USB data by simply using Windows Explorer to copy and paste the files and folders.
8. Storing data on your H: and O: drives makes it easier and faster to replace your computer when it comes time to upgrade to a newer model as well as in cases of hardware failure.
We hope you never experience catastrophic data loss, theft or hardware failure. While OTS would certainly try to recover data, the best defense is a good offense: make use of your network resources and make sure you have backups of your important documents.
If you need help learning how to back up your data or use your H: and O: drives, OTS offers:
