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P a g e | 1 Guidance on short term Data Management for DClinPsy Trainees at the University of Sheffield Dr Richard R. Plant 20120207 JISC DMSPpsych Project Introduction This is a guide to keeping your documents and files safe over the short term whilst studying at the University of Sheffield. It is not a definitive guide and nor is it intended to provide guidance on long term archiving. Also it is not a guide to confidentiality, the Data Protection Act or anonymising personal data. It is purely about data security and preservation over the short term. Think about what’s the worst that could happen to your documents and files? Your house could burn down, your laptop might get stolen, your hard drive melt or you sit on your memory stick! This guide is intended to help ensure you don’t lose the actual files and documents themselves over and above the media they were stored on. Good practice suggests that you should have copies of your important files in three separate locations. Often this means a copy at home on your laptop, a copy at work or on campus and a nowadays a copy in the cloud. By cloud we mean somewhere like Dropbox or other could based file storage accessed via the internet, e.g. LiveDrive, Mozy, SkyDrive and Live Mesh, Box, Carbonite, Jungle Disk, SpiderOak, SugarSync, Syncplicity and Apples iCloud amongst others. So when the worst does happen, and it will at least once over your career, you can shrug it off and carry on regardless. Central IT provision through CiCs If you are a trainee at Sheffield you will generally make use of a managed desktop computer provided by CiCs (Corporate Information and Computing Services). This means that wherever on campus you login your files will be accessible from that computer. The files themselves are not stored on the computer you are working on but are held on central University servers. As your files are held on central servers they are backed up nightly. As standard you will also get access to the approved set of applications, e.g. Word, Excel etc. The Managed Desktop environment comes in three broad flavours: Open Access: Is available across various locations across campus for all students to have access to as required. Departmental: Images are typically used by particular departments in specified rooms used by their own faculty students. These are broadly speaking identical to open access workstations. However designated departmental technicians have administrative access rights to these PCs for the purpose of installation of specialist academic software. Staff: Again almost identical. Used by various clerical, academic and support staff across campus. Certain specified CiCS front-line support technicians have admin rights to these images. Also users are able to utilise a non-volatile storage located on the local physical hard disk. From: http://fconolly.staff.shef.ac.uk/overview3.htm So to sum up with a managed desktop all your documents, internet bookmarks and the like will be available from wherever you login on campus (drive U:). You will also have access to a shared area, or drive letter, that everyone in Psychology can access (drive M:). You can also save documents etc. on your desktop or in MyDocuments or similar. P a g e | 2 For more information you can contact the CiCs helpdesk via various methods. Their primary contact page can be found here: http://www.shef.ac.uk/cics/support. How much storage will I get? By default you will receive 500Mb of central storage for your files and documents. This roughly equates to: Movies Fine mode (13Mbps/CBR) 5 min. Normal mode (9Mbps/VBR) 7.5 min. Economy mode (6Mbps/VBR) 11.25 min. Photos 10 Megapixels, 3648x2736, Fine mode 192 Music ACC, MP3 HQ mode, 128Kbps 8.5hrs If you would like to increase your file store limits you can email [email protected] or ring 21111 from an internal phone. You also have the option of visiting the helpdesk in person (Computing Centre, Hounsfield Road). For more details see: http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/cics/support/help. Increases to your storage allowance are negotiated on a case-by-case basis and initially it might be best to speak to your departmental IT liaison. In the case of Psychology this is currently Chris Smith ([email protected] | phone 29773). What if I accidently delete a file? Unfortunately files do get overwritten or deleted from time-to-time. We all do it! If you are using a CiCs managed desktop you can use Explorer to select your U: drive and then right click to bring up a “Salvage files” menu. This will let you attempt to recover files that you have accidently deleted. You can sort by title, date or size to help you locate the deleted file(s). You should do this as soon as possible after deletion. For files that you cannot recover yourself you can ask the CiCs Helpdesk if they can recover them from a backup. However be aware that the chances of recovery at this stage are slim and CiCs are under no obligation to attempt to recover the file(s). File versioning and sensible filenames It’s often prudent to have more than one version of a file in case you want to go back to an earlier revision. Some Operating Systems have this functionality built in. However if you use a managed desktop machine you will have to make do with manual file versioning unless the specific software you are using supports versioning. To do manual versioning each time you make a major revision to a file or document you are working on simply append a sensible incrementing suffix, e.g. <filename> 20120206 v2.doc. Where for example the date is added in reverse order (yyyymmdd) followed by a revision number. Then you can clearly see the revisions the file went through. Sensible filenames are also a must. In short you should give your files names that you yourself would be able to understand in the coming months and years. This is in addition to encoding versioning information in the file name. So for example, “stuff.doc”, might be better titled as “Final DClinPsy Thesis RRP 20120206 v4.doc”. What if I want to work on something at home? If you want to work on files or documents at home you have one centrally supported option. That is to use “myFileStore” though MUSE (My University of Sheffield Environment). There is a general guide to working from home or off-campus from CiCs at: http://www.shef.ac.uk/cics/remote P a g e | 3 To download a file which you wish to edit at home login into MUSE and then click on “myFileStore”. The blue arrow shows the shared storage that everyone across the Psychology department can access and the red arrow shows you personal filestore that you use on campus when logged into a managed desktop computer. If you want to work your thesis say, you will need to navigate to where it is stored using the pane on the left and then tick the box on the left next to the file. P a g e | 4 Then click on the “File” menu and then on “Download...” This will download the file onto the computer you are working on. You should then save the file somewhere on your local machine. Once you have saved the file you can work on it as normal. Remember you are working on a local copy of the file and not the one on the University servers. Hence the file is not backed up until you upload it using myFileStore. Also remember if you download a copy to work on at home and overwrite a previous copy on your local machine you will replace it with the one you just downloaded. So be careful about what you overwrite! It’s a good idea to give the files a different filename to help you keep track of versions. Once you’ve edited the document to copy the file back onto the University servers through myFileStore click on “File” and then “Upload…”. “Browse” your local hard drive and select the file and click “Open”. Then finally click on the “Upload” button. P a g e | 5 The file you have been working on will then be stored on the central server, be backed up as a matter of course, and also be available on your managed desktop machine when working on Campus. Remember if you edit the file on campus through your managed desktop then that will be the most recent version of the file and not the one on your own computer at home. To work on the latest version at home you would need to download it again from myFileStore, work on it and then upload it again as outlined. P a g e | 6 What about taking information off-site and implications for personal information/confidentiality? CiCs offer general advice on taking data offsite as shown below. For specific cases such as the NHS they suggest you contact the appropriate liaison person. Personal Information on Portable Computers and Media Background There have been a number of recent well-publicised cases where CDs or laptops containing personal information have either been lost or stolen. The Information Commissioner now takes the view that 'where such losses occur and where encryption software has not been used to protect the data, enforcement action will be pursued.' Policy Personal Information may only be created, processed or stored on portable computers or portable media where all of the following criteria have been satisfied: That alternative means of working have been explored.