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 ************************************************************************** LLTI is a service of IALLT, the International Association for Language Learning Technologies (http://iallt.org/), and The Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning (http://www.languageconsortium.org/). Join IALLT at http://iallt.org. Subscribe, unsubscribe, search the archives at http://listserv.dartmouth.edu/scripts/wa.exe?A0=LLTI Otmar Foelsche, LLTI-Editor ([log in to unmask]) **************************************************************************