The chart below details Local file storage options on individual computers. Some of these come with the computer, some have additional costs. While your department's Computing Consultant can assist you with them, and advise you about best practices, none of them are are actually administered or maintained by LTS on a daily basis, like the LAN systems. Note that As such, while we recognize the need for them, due to convenience, cost, and capability, none of these are really recommended as places for storage of data worth saving. LTS recommends LAN or cloud storage in almost every case.
Note: according to university policy, the internal hard drives of faculty and staff members personal computers' internal hard drives are to be encrypted, with decryption keys maintained by LTS.
| System | Notes | Size | Cost | Backup | Sharing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Internal Hard Drive | Pros: Comes with computer, large capacity Cons: self-managed backup, Not automatically shared. | Medium - Large | - | - | Custom |
| Additional Internal Drive | Pros: cheap, fast, large capacity Cons: co-located with computer, limited internal mounts, self-managed backup, logically separate | Medium - Large | $100 - $200 | - | Custom |
| External Drive (USB, etc) | Pros: cheap, fast, larger capacity, portable Cons: reliability, steal-able, co-located with computer, self-managed backup | Medium - Large | $100 - $200 | - | Custom |
| Flash Drive (USB) | Pros: Very cheap, portable Cons: Least reliable, lose-able, self-managed backup, 'lose-able' | Small-Medium | $20- $100 | - |
No | |||
| Optical Disks (DVD) | Pros: very cheap, portable Cons: small size, slow performance, 'lose-able' | Small | $0.20 |
| No |