Where to Save Files When Working in Labs

On a personal computer you can generally save your files on the desktop or in your documents folder without a second thought. The same is not true when working in the Mac Computer Labs. The computers are shared by hundreds of students so you need to be careful where you save your files. Here are some options.

Best Option: Saving Files onto a External Hard Drive

When working with large video and audio files there is no alternative to using an external hard drive. Hard drives come in a variety of sizes with regard to storage capacity and physical size. Generally speaking, the smaller the drive physically is the slower it will transfer data. Small portable drives use laptop hard disks which make them more portable and durable but at the expensive of speed. Larger “Desktop” model drives are more fragil but spin faster. (One exception is SSD drives which are both small and fast but are expensive and have smaller capacities.) We do not recommend one brand over another except to say that you shouldn’t expect great results from the cheapest drive on the shelf.

Almost all external drives come pre-formatted for Windows Computers in the NTFS format. The Mac computers will not be able to write files to NTFS drives! In order to use them with the Mac computers you’ll need to re-format the drive – How to Format Hard Drives.

USB Thumb drives are usable for small files and photo but are too slow for use with video files.

Important: Before you disconnect the drive you must eject it from the computer. To do so simply drag the drive icon from the desktop into the trash on the lower righthand corner of the screen. Failure to eject the drive before disconnecting it from the computer might result in data loss.

Saving Files onto a Network Share

There are dozens of BU, COM, and internet services which allow you to save your files to a network drive “in the cloud” and access them from any other computer. BU offers Google Drive storage for all students as well as the MyFiles service which is good for up to 250Mb of storage.

While many of these services are free they are rarely a replacement for having you own hard drive as they are too slow or offer too little storage.

Saving Files onto the “Scratch Media” drive

In all COM labs we have a drive called “Scratch Media” which students are welcome to use. The Scratch Media drive is intended for short term storage of temporary files, such as an in-class exercise or a project which will be completed within an hour. The following applies to the Scratch Media drive:

• ALL files saved on the scratch media drive are automatically deleted after one week. A file created this Monday will be gone the following Monday. This process is automatic and can not be stopped by the staff.
• ALL files saved in the scratch media drive are visible to everyone; expect no privacy or security. Do not put any files on this drive you would not be willing to share with the world.
• The Scratch Media drives are local to that computer. If you put a file onto the scratch media drive in 338-12 it will only be on that computer.
• Anyone is able to delete files from the scratch media drive. Do not put any files on this drive you are not willing to lose.

Saving Files to the Desktop or Documents Folder

Do Not Save Files to the Desktop or Documents Folders! Files saved to these locations are automatically deleted forever when you log out. There is no stopping this. Putting “DO NOT DELETE” in the filename won’t help. Only put files on the desktop that you never plan to use again.