Local drives - what's the best policy?

  • Thread starter Thread starter mike.james
  • Start date Start date
M

mike.james

Given most desktop machines come with built in hard disks - often with huge
capacities - what do most people do with them?
Do you stop your users actually making use of them?
Do you back them up?

I'm interested in what people think they should do and what they actually
do.
mikej
 
mike.james said:
Given most desktop machines come with built in hard disks - often with huge
capacities - what do most people do with them?
Do you stop your users actually making use of them?
Do you back them up?

I'm interested in what people think they should do and what they actually
do.
mikej
Click to expand...

In a server environment you need to do this:
- Explain to management that local disk drives do not get backed up.
- Formulate a policy that explains clearly where staff should
store their files, and where they should not.
- Get management to endorse your policy.
- Publish it.
- Monitor things regularly, and discuss the matter with first-time
"offenders".
- Report repeat "offenders" to management in your monthly
report, by name or anonymously, whatever is appropriate.

Remember: You were given funds to implement a solid
backup solution. If staff lose important files because they
store them on their huge local drives then ***you*** will
have to face the music, unless you can demonstrate that
staff acted repeatedly against well-published office policy.
 
Pegasus (MVP) said:
In a server environment you need to do this:
- Explain to management that local disk drives do not get backed up.
- Formulate a policy that explains clearly where staff should
store their files, and where they should not.
- Get management to endorse your policy.
- Publish it.
- Monitor things regularly, and discuss the matter with first-time
"offenders".
- Report repeat "offenders" to management in your monthly
report, by name or anonymously, whatever is appropriate.

Remember: You were given funds to implement a solid
backup solution. If staff lose important files because they
store them on their huge local drives then ***you*** will
have to face the music, unless you can demonstrate that
staff acted repeatedly against well-published office policy.
Click to expand...

I second the motion. Its surprising why so many corporations don't see the
light to such a policy. A user can log in from anywhere within the domain
and still have access to his or her protected, backed-up files.

Users says: "my drive crashed"
Techie: laughs, install new drive, ghosts the standard desktop, joins
domain. Done.
User: "You lost my data"
Techie: "not my problem, you lost my company's data cause you didn't follow
protocol"
User: "i'll tell your manager"
Techie: "No need to, its in my report"

Who benefits? everyone does. Specially the user.
 
The best policy for local drives is to have nothing on them that cannot be
replaced. Programs - yep, that's fine, you should have the media for them.
Operating system - sure, in fact, that's almost a requirement. Temporary
cache/files - absolutely.

User data and documents - nope, no way, no how, never.

We prohibit (through AD policies) any regular user saving anything to their
hard drive. Managers and trusted users are directed by policies to a "My
Documents" folder on the server by default. They can bypass this and use
their local drive but they are warned (early and often) that in the event of
a problem with their PC that we will NOT attempt to recover documents on the
local drive.

--
Richard G. Harper [MVP Shell/User] (e-mail address removed)
* PLEASE post all messages and replies in the newsgroups
* for the benefit of all. Private mail is usually not replied to.
* My website, such as it is ... http://rgharper.mvps.org/
* HELP us help YOU ... http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
 
I agree with the sentiments expressed.
But I have a small worry.
I run a small but new network with around 50 workstations.
Each has a 250GByte hard disk (don't ask why I didn't select the hardware).
That's 50*250G= 12,500G i.e. over 12TBytes..... and most of it is
unused....for reason you have already outlined.
Comments?

mikej
 
mike.james said:
I agree with the sentiments expressed.
But I have a small worry.
I run a small but new network with around 50 workstations.
Each has a 250GByte hard disk (don't ask why I didn't select the hardware).
That's 50*250G= 12,500G i.e. over 12TBytes..... and most of it is
unused....for reason you have already outlined.
Comments?

mikej
Click to expand...

You won't get any advantage by allowing your users to
use this vast amount of disk space, so you might as well
forget about it. I wonder what the rationale was when
the decision was made to buy such lare disks . . .
 
You won't get any advantage by allowing your users to
use this vast amount of disk space, so you might as well
forget about it. I wonder what the rationale was when
the decision was made to buy such lare disks . . .
Click to expand...

This also is what is troubling me - did they have some other idea or was the
price
more or less the same given the falling price makes drive size less relevant
in determining price.
mikej
 
The responses to this have been interesting and the way things should be...
We have this policy in our organisation and I am now faced with a problem
that I have to solve.

We have several remote sites that have their own DC but all users data is
stored at HQ. Any time users want to read/write to a document, they have to
drag it across the network. We have several users reporting that when they
try to save documents (Word2k in particular) it is taking about 30-60sec to
save the document. The documents are between 3-6mb. These sites currently
have 2mb links connecting them and there are no network problems detected.
This was a bigger problem when autosave was enabled, and we have since turned
this off for some users.

What would you determine the problem was above?
For remote sites, if not storing data locally where should it go and should
users have to deal with the network speed issues?
 
What's the average, maximum and minute-to-minute load on these WAN links? 2
megabits isn't a big pipe and if you have several users all pounding on it
at once it'll go under right quick.

Until you can answer these questions you don't have enough information to
decide where the problem lies.

--
Richard G. Harper [MVP Shell/User] (e-mail address removed)
* PLEASE post all messages and replies in the newsgroups
* for the benefit of all. Private mail is usually not replied to.
* My website, such as it is ... http://rgharper.mvps.org/
* HELP us help YOU ... http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
 
Back
Top