The H Drive

Some of you may have arrived to school on Tuesday, the first day of finals, to discover your files were not accessible.  Of course, teachers understand the value of not waiting until the last minute to do things, so none of us would have been troubled by this.  Certainly every teacher had their final already printed, locked in a drawer and just waiting for the students to come and take it.    Or, we live in the real world of teaching where copiers don’t always work, and final exams aren’t created until the last minute.  I suspect  there were a few teachers who planned to copy their tests on Tueday but could not due to the H Drive failure.

While I was not one of those people, I have been inconvencied enough by technological failure to be wary of these kinds of situations.  I’ve emailed tests to myself from home only to find that the email just isn’t working that day.  I’ve stored files on a website so that I could access them that way only to find the school’s internet connection wasn’t viable.  All of these technological failures can be very frustrating, so in my life I have a high degree of redundancy for my files.  Surely if one thing fails, Plan B, C, D, F, will still work, at least in theory.

H drive failure is particularly troubing because all of our work is stored on that drive, from tests to worksheets to letters of recommendations.   I highly recommend you buy yourself a flash drive and copy all your folder contents to that flash drive at the end of the semester or year.  (Of course, given current cirumstances this wouldn’t help you, but I have a flash drive of files from the end of May 2009 that could be used in a pinch).    The other method I recommend for storing files is google docs.  This is a file sharing and storage system offered through google at  http://docs.google.com.  All you need to do is make an account with them, upload files from home or work and those files can be accessed from any computer with an internet connection (password protected).   Another great thing about google docs is that you don’t need microsoft office to open the documents, google will translate them into a format anyone can read.

Google docs also allows you to keep your documents private, or you can “publish” them and allow anyone to see the file if they have the link to them.  This can be useful for students to access class materials.   I use this function to share powerpoint presentations with students, you can embed the presentation right into a website or page like this one and then point students to the presentation or watch them on a digital projector.

All in all, it doesn’t matter what backup plan you have for your school drive – as long as you have one.