The information contained in this article is only valid at the time of publication and will not be updated. Please search the Resnet site if you have questions.
How
Not To Lose Your Paper:
Have you or someone you love ever been the victim of a lost
paper due to a corrupted disk, or a virus? Sometimes even
the most knowledgeable computer staff cannot recover lost
data so prevent the loss by keeping multiple copies of important
files in multiple locations.
Back that thang up…
If you own a computer, it’s great to store a copy of
all your papers on your hard drive. For those of you who use
the computer labs, and even for those of you who do own a
computer, external storage media, such as floppy disks, Zip
and Jaz disks, and CDs are useful to store backup copies of
papers.
Burn, baby, burn…
CD recordable (CD-R) and CD re-writeable (CD-RW) drives are
rapidly becoming the backup method of choice. CDs can hold
around 700MB. If bought in bulk, CDs are relatively cheap
and are reliable as long as they don’t get scratched.
You can only write to (or “burn”) a CD-R once,
while CD-RWs are reusable. Currently, only the Lehman and
West Wing computer labs have CD-RW drives with which you can
view information written to a CD-R or CD-RW disc as well as
burn your own copy; however, we are planning in the future
to have CD-RW drives in all of the labs.
I’m down with FTP…
No floppy, no Zip disk? No worries. You can use FTP
(file transfer protocol) to store files on a remote server.
Some people email a copy of their papers to themselves as
an attachment using a web-based email program like Hotmail,
Barnard’s Webmail, or Columbia’s CUBMail. These
web-based email programs FTP a copy of the attached file to
the respective email server and then send the attachment to
the user’s inbox. However, you can FTP documents directly
to your directory on Barnard’s or Columbia’s mail
server without emailing yourself. Students are allotted a
25MB quota on Barnard’s email server for email and files.
If you would like more help learning how to FTP, just come
into our Lehman lab and ask a consultant to assist you or
check the extended version of this article on the resnet web
site. www.barnard.edu/at/resnet/Divas/March.html
A few more tips…
Another way to prevent document disasters is to make
sure you save your paper often. Working on a paper for hours
without saving it can lead to trouble if your computer crashes,
so be sure to save frequently. Nice features within MS Word
are the “Auto recover” and “background saves”.
Click on the “Tools” menu and then the “Save”
tab for these options. Refer to Microsoft Word help for info
on these and other saving features in Word.
Always keep up to date on security issues for your computer
(see www.barnard.edu/at/resnet/top10secbrief.htm)
and send us your questions.