Do You Still Have Your Data? • What if your hard drive crashes? • What if you are accused of fraud? • What if your collaborator abruptly quits? • What if the building burns down? • What if you need to use your old data? • What if your backup fails? • What if your computer gets stolen? • What if…
Learn the basics of managing your research well, covering the topics of: file organization and naming, documentation, storage and backups, and future file usability.
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Transcript
Do You Still Have Your Data?
• What if your hard drive crashes?
• What if you are accused of fraud?
• What if your collaborator abruptly quits?
• What if the building burns down?
• What if you need to use your old data?
• What if your backup fails?
• What if your computer gets stolen?
• What if…
Data Management 101
14 November 2014
Kristin Briney, PhD
Data Management Basics
• Introduction to a few topics in data management
– File organization and naming
– Documentation
– Storage and backups
– Future file usability
For each minute of planning atbeginning of a project, you will save10 minutes of headache later
FILE ORGANIZATION & NAMING
Dan Zen, http://www.flickr.com/photos/danzen/5551831155/ (CC BY)
File Organization
• What?
– Keeping your files in order
File Organization
• Why?
– Easier to find and use data
– Tell, at a glance, what is done and what you have yet to do
– Can still find and use files in the future
File Organization
• When?
– Always!
– Get in the habit of putting files in the right place
• Eg. Google Drive– “When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services,
you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones”
Backups
http://toystory.disney.com/
Backups
• How?
– Any backup is better than none
– Automatic backup is better than manual
– Your work is only as safe as your backup plan
Backups
• How?
– Check your backups
• Backups only as good as ability to recover data
• Test your backups periodically– Preferably a fixed schedule
– 1 or 2 times a year may be enough
– Bigger/more complex backups should be checked more often
• Test your backup whenever you change things
Example
• I keep my data
– On my computer
– Backed up manually on shared drive
• I set a weekly reminder to do this
– Backed up automatically via SpiderOak cloud storage