Storage Options
Overview and Quotas
The campus no longer offers free, unlimited storage. Drive and Box now have quotas. We still have the FileServer, but access is limited to UC personnel only.
Remember: data that is mission-critical should not be entrusted to a single storage solution, especially if that single solution is “the cloud”.
SPA Details
SPA – Special Purpose Account
SPAs – Special Purpose Accounts, owned by the department, not an individual. SPAs have the same benefits as other campus accounts – email with two aliases, Drive folder, Box folder, Calendar. However, items owned by a SPA will not be deleted when a user leaves.
Please contact Anna Maurer for more information. We have 95+ SPAs, so there might be one already created for your group, or we can create another.
Google Drive and Shared Drives
Google Drive is part of the Google Suite that the campus has a contract with. Drive can be reached via bConnected or from the Google Apps menu in the upper right of bMail, bCal, etc.
The entire Google Suite has a quota of 150GB – email, Drive, and photos combined. Files created or uploaded to Google Drive are automatically “owned” by the person completing the action. This is true even if the file is going into a folder “owned” by someone else. Shared Drives do not follow this pattern – Anyone can create a Shared Drive, and any files in that Drive are owned by the campus. Please work with Anna Maurer to create a SPA/Shared Drive for your SPA.
Google Drive is accepted for datasets at Protection Level 3. Data that is Protection Level 4 is not allowed on Drive.
Need to Manage Drive Files
Box Drive
Box can be reached via bConnected or from the Google Apps menu in the upper right of bMail, bCal, etc. The Box icon is near the bottom of that list.
Box Drive has a quota of 50GB. Files uploaded to Box are owned by whoever owns the folder that file is in. Box does not have Shared Drives.
Box is accepted for datasets at Protection Level 3. Data that is Protection Level 4 is not allowed on Box.
File Server
The Department has a File Server down at the Data Center. ALL files on the File Server are “owned” by the Department, and access is controlled at the Calnet ID level. Access to the File Server is limited to campus networks only and those with a valid Calnet Account and with the right permissions. Permission is managed by the System Administrator for the Department.
The File Server is suitable for long term storage of Department files that no longer need to be on Google Drive or Box.
Please contact Anna Maurer at annam@berkeley.edu to request access.
External
External Storage Options
Please be mindful of how much data you are storing “in the cloud”. If you are getting close to 150GB, please archive files you haven’t accessed in a while to the File Server, or delete items that are no longer needed. Please keep in mind which files are Department owned and which are personal. For assistance in file storage issues, please contact Anna Maurer at annam@berkeley.edu.
For details on campus storage solutions, please visit File Storage & Collaboration.
At this time, the only storage solution the Department covers is the Enterprise Storage Option, which is our File Server.