from Ryan Brazell <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: #9719 individual user backups on OS X?
Date: October 28, 2011 11:53:00 PM EDT

Lauren: I use DropBox myself but hadn't even considered it for this.
We'd need to provide some best practices -- UCSF is a health sciences
school and sometimes our users are handling sensitive data which
really shouldn't be accessible from all of  their devices -- but for
the majority of folks, this would be really easy to use. Great idea!

Trip: That's a really great head start on rsync+Automator -- I
wouldn't be able to hardcode the name of the external volume (seeing
as I would have no way of knowing what it is in advance) but with a
little tweaking that might be a good option for those who can't/don't
use Dropbox. Thanks!

Derek: In our case, users actually do log in with their campus (Active
Directory) credentials. Once they authenticate successfully, a private
user folder accessible only to them is created on the local
workstation, within the standard /Macintosh HD/Users folder (or, if
they have logged in recently, they are granted access to the same
local user folder created for them on a previous login, with all of
their work intact). Their account is granted standard user privileges
in OS X, so they can see that other folders exist within /Macintosh
HD/Users but cannot access any of the information therein. If a person
doesn't log into the workstation for 30 days, their folder in
/Macintosh HD/Users is deleted. If after 30 days they log in again,
they start from scratch with a fresh user folder containing none of
their previous work.

Many of our users are in the 5-10GB range in terms of data, but some
of these video projects can get fairly large, up around 100GB or more.
We advocate the use of external drives (and will even loan 500GB
external drives to users for free if they need/want them) but we are
seeing that people simply won't back up their stuff if it takes more
than 2-3 clicks. We see a huge diversity of skill level come through
our facility, and even most of the folks who DO know how to properly
organize a flash drive, simply don't -- they have multiple copies of
files, or a series of slightly different files, and it only gets worse
as the project drags on.

In short we want to automate as much of the process as possible. If
creating a backup means 1) figuring out where OS X is storing video
project files 2) copying those into a second folder (because
relocating would break their iMovie or Final Cut project) and 3)
creating a zip file, it isn't going to happen. If it can't happen
automagically in the background ala DropBox, it needs to require three
or fewer clicks.

Does that help clarify? Thanks for any ideas you might come up with!

Ryan

--
Ryan Brazell
Learning Technologies Specialist
UCSF Library and Center for Knowledge Management
[log in to unmask]
415.476.9421 | 415.476.4653 (fax)

President-Elect, SWALLT
Find me on Twitter: @ryanbrazell
http://languagelabunleashed.org



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