Under the former set of rules for the Open Access Labs temp drive share (M:), the only item examined was the root directory that a user created. This directory was removed if its modified date was older than 30 days. Unfortunately, this policy did not take into account subdirectories that contained files that had been modified within those 30 days. To remedy this problem, the guidelines used to manage the Open Access Labs temp drive share have been changed.

The Open Access Labs temp drive share is truly a temporary storage area. It should NOT be used for storage of mission-critical, non-reproducible data, or as a backup storage medium for any other system. Everything and anything on the share can be removed at any given time without warning. No backup is maintained or planned for this share. Only academic-related materials should be stored on this share.

The files on the Open Access Labs temp drive share are placed on a seven-day cycle. Each individual file is checked, and after seven days of inactivity, it is removed from the share. The temp drive share was never meant as a location where programs are installed and launched. The guidelines are enforced in such a way that most executables (and some other files) are removed within a twenty-four-hour period of being 'installed' onto the temp drive share. However, any programs that you create yourself, document files of any type that you edit frequently, and other files that you have created and modify with some frequency within the seven-day guideline limit should be safe from removal. However, there is NO GUARANTEE. What you put there this minute may be gone the next minute.

Space consumption is monitored on a 'per user' basis. (In other words, even if you make thirty directories with one megabyte of data in each one, it is seen as your user ID taking up 30 megabytes of space.) Users are allowed a reasonable amount of space on the temp drive. Reasonable is defined, in this case, as 100 megabytes of consumed space. Anything over this amount will be considered an infringement of these practices.

Also, the rule has always been that there is to be only one file in the root of the Open Access Labs temp drive share. That file is the "!!Temp_Drive_Practices!!.txt" file. All other files found in the root of the share (in other words, not in a subdirectory) will be removed as soon as they are found. NO date analysis will be conducted on these files before removing them.

Lastly, anyone found abusing temp drive share privileges shall have those privileges revoked, and they will not be able to access the temp drive share in any way. The duration for this revocation shall be decided on a case-by-case basis.

Summary of OAL Temp Drive Share Guidelines

• The temp drive share (M:) is for academic use only.
• Files will be removed after seven days.
• NO backup is provided for this share.
• Users are allowed a reasonable amount of space (100 megabytes).
• Do not put any files in the root; make subdirectories.
• Do not install programs on the temp drive share.
• Do not abuse your privileges to this resource. Your access to it can be denied.

For More Help

If you need more assistance, please feel free to ask the CIS Support Staff in any Open Access Lab, or call Help Desk Central at (979)845-8300.