File Management

Where to save your files at the Faculty of Architecture

On the computers of the faculty of architecture, you've got several locations at your disposal to save your files. These are several recommendations to save you from disaster.

• Saving your files when working

Save your files in a local location of the computer you're working on, eg: D:\ or C:\Temp, this is on the hard drive of the computer.

• Saving your files on Blackboard My Content (200 MB) or Dropbox (or similar) when done working, or moving to a different pc.

Every student has personal storage on blackboard where files can be placed.

• Saving your files on your USB Stick/iPod/etc when done working, or moving to a different pc.

Don't work directly from the network drive (H:\) or from your USB Stick

While it's possible to work on files stored on your H:\-drive, this is strongly discouraged. The H:\-drive is a network location with limited storage capacity. When you reach your quota, or the network fails you will loose your data, and the saved version on the network might be corrupted or broken. Also, the writing and reading a 1GB Adobe Photoshop file will take a long time when working over the network and slow down the faculty's network. Just don't work over the network.

Please note that in the current set-up at the faculty of Architecture, your Desktop and My Documents reside on your H:-drive. So when saving data in either location, they will be transferred across the network and may deplete the available storage quickly. This can cause software to crash, as your profile data which is also stored on your H:-drive, cannot be used properly.

The same problems apply to using USB Sticks. Reading and writing to USB sticks is slower than when using the computer's hard drive. Furthermore, when they're not properly disconnected you could run into all kinds of trouble. Just be safe and don't work directly from your USB stick.

Recommended routine

• Before you start working on files (ie: opening them in a application), copy them to D:\ or another local location on the computer.
• Open the file
• Once you've finished, save the file.
• Close the application and copy the file(s) to your removable media or blackboard

Tip: Keep Versions

Rename your files to a different version every once in a while. This makes it easier to change back to earlier versions of your work. The most common solution is to use a version number or date in your filename, for example: bsc4_projectA_version_1.dwg

Tip: Make Backups

Backups are made every day of your Blackboard 'My Content' and H:\-drive in case of disaster (floods, hurricanes, hardware crashes and nuclear disasters), but make backups yourself for errors you make (for example accidentally overwriting a wrong file or deleting files you really needed). Restoring backups of files in your Blackboard or H\:-drive may be very expensive, so make your own.

Also: make backups when you're using your own USB Stick. Murphy's law is usually true when working towards a deadline. You would not be the first one to loose a USB stick the day before your final presentation (or having a fellow student accidentally breaking it by bumping in to it while it's plugged in your computer).

Related topics

• Maya File Management
• Reducing filesize for submissions in infoBase
• Opening scenes from newer versions of Maya