File storage and backup

All employees and students at the University of Bergen have a personal area at the UiB file servers.

This is the "home directory" where you should store personal files associated with work or studies at UiB.

The IT department provides backup and access control to keep your files safe.

Safe in the home directory

At UiB Windows PCs, you always find the home directory as "My documents" or drive O:\

Employees have 10 GB of storage, students 2 GB (October 2009). Available space is expanded at irregular intervals.

On a Windows PC set up by the IT department, you will find your home directory as drive O:\ or "My Documents". This is the default storage. On Linux you will find your home directory on the desktop as your username's "home".

Synchronizing laptop and home directory

Laptops are set up by the IT department to synchronize with your home directory.

This is to ensure that all files remain in your home directory.

When you work on your PC outside the UiB network, the files and documents are stored locally on your PC.

The synchronization transfers new or updated files to and from your home directory to be automatically backed up every night.

ithout this synchronization, the files will be lost e.g. if the laptop is lost, the hard drive broken or the files deleted.

Remember that synchronization must be run without error messages.

Read more about Windows laptops and synchronization

Shared directories

Units at UiB have shared server directories for internal file sharing.

Specific read and write access here may be admitted on demand. On Windows computers, the primary units shared directory will appear automatically as drive P:\ in "My Computer".

Additional shared directories may be created e.g. for interdisciplinary cooperation.

If you have more than one employer at UiB, you may apply for access to additional shared directories in Sebra.

These must be connected manually, in Windows preferrably as Q: \.

Need more storage space?

UiB units may buy more storage space on personal home directories or shared directories.

Check the IT department's prices in Intranett:

• https://intranett.uib.no/uPortal/Link?id=5455

Order more storage space through Issue-Tracker:

• https://bs.uib.no/

Access outside UiB

For secure access to personal home directoriy or shared directories at UiB servers, we recommend:

• VPN (Virtual Private Network)

Alternatives are:

• SSH software - secure terminal window and secure file transfer
• Mindterm - SSH through the browser (only students)
• http://hjemmekontor.uib.no - Windows desktop through Internet / terminal services (only employees)

Backup

Remember backup of your own data!

How much can you afford to lose?

All of your home directory and all shared areas are backed up daily. This means your files can be restored if your computer crashes, is stolen or you delete files by accident.

Note that files saved only locally on the PC are not backed up by the IT department. On laptops the data are synchronized the night after synchronization.

The backup system may have several versions of your file. For up to 92 days we have maximum 7 copies of your files. This means that we may be able to restore a previous versions of a document.

If a file is deleted, it will remain in the backup system for a year.

Remember to backup your data!

Restore from backup

Do you need to have data restored from the backup system? Register an issue to the IT department at https://bs.uib.no.

Remember to include name and date on the files or directories you want to be restored.

Read more (Norwegian version only):

"Temaserie fra IT-avdelingen:Lagring og backup" (pdf):

• http://it.uib.no/wysiwygpro/uploaded-docs/it/www/it/it-portal/tema/temaserie_it_nr1_2009.pdf