These drives are used for backing up all participant data collected in the lab environment. All participant data is completely confidential and must not be shared outside the lab environment or carried outside the locked doors of the lab (e.g., anything personally-identifying especially).

In order to ensure all data is kept and stored safely, backups should be done weekly. One specific time period on one specific day per week should be maintained during each semester that participant data is being recorded. In the event of a hard drive failure for any of the PC towers in the lab, the backup will be the resource that will have all the data ready for recovery.

• All 2.5″ hard drives should be considered a VERY “short-term” backup space. The reason is, these are generally very fragile and can be unstable. If the hard drive survives past a few weeks or months, it might have some stability, but this cannot be trusted. Keep the hard drive “padded” (e.g., bubble wrapped) and ensure it’s in a secure location. Any physical damage can cause immediate corruption (unfortunately…). The 2.5″ Hitachi hard drive in the lab is used as a mobile drive for backing up in the lab, so the lab manager may move between each PC without dragging the larger drive (see below) and needing to plug it in each time a backup is completed.
• A 3.5″ hard drive is preferable for holding data in general, because these generally have more capacity and can withstand more physical movement. The 3.5″ Western Digital in the lab has all the backup data from the recording PCs of the lab. Remember to have all short-term data from the 2.5″ drive put onto this drive.

***Suggestion*** – Mirror the 3.5″ drive, just in the worst-case scenario it fails. What this could mean is investing in another 3.5″ drive (it may cost around $70-$110) to ensure that both drives have all the data at one time. If there is a way to have this done automatically, that would be ideal. The reason is, if your reliable 3.5″ suddenly doesn’t synchronize with a PC and/or Mac one day, it could be the unfortunate foreboding that a backup data recovery company is the next number to dial.

***Suggestion 2*** – Backup data recovery is a very expensive and costly procedure. If this can be avoided at all costs, please try to ensure it is prevented. It will be a cost that will set the lab back far more than it needs to be.