Not Using the server

["Comeau, Lisa" <Lisa -dot- Comeau -at- MOH -dot- GOV -dot- ON -dot- CA>]

Several people have made comments on the original post from Beth asking
things like:

"is there a functional reason why Beth is affected because they aren't held
on the server?"

"Does it interfere with or pose a threat to the ability of you or other
people to do work?"

Now, it may well be that this is just a pet peeve of Beth's, but, as a
former Network Administrator, and trainer, I have to say that ANY TIME a
"user" or "client" saves work to their hard drive as opposed to the server,
it DOES affect the way other people work, if they're on the same team.

A perfect example is a situation a friend ran into in a previous incarnation
as a data recovery specialist. A team of four people were working on a
manual which was due for release in 2 weeks. Three used both their hard
drives and the server for storage-so they had backups. One used only her
hard drive, stating that "it takes too long to copy something to the
server". (Please note that said server was lightning fast).

Two days before the manual was to be released, the fourth team member had a
terrible system crash. (She spilled coffee INTO her PC air vents - don't ask
how - 2 years later, we still don't know...) Needless to say, data was
unrecoverable. (Okay, so my friend got about 3 pages of her section of the
manual, but the actual file was about 85Mb in size.)

So now, all 4 members of the team had to scramble to recreate her lost data,
and get the manual out on time. (Which they didn't, of course...)

Any time you work with a team that exchanges information, you ALL must be
well-versed in how to responsibly share data. It's just common sense. How
hard is it to make copies of your data to a shared drive? Start the copy at
the end of the day, as you're putting your desk in order, and getting ready
to go home. Then it's not interrupting, or keeping you from catching the bus
on time.

Also, as an aside, (and I'd NEVER accuse any of YOU of doing this) ;-) many
people when saving to their hard drive, allow the computer to decide what
destination the file will have. This often results in panic because the file
is "not where I saved it". Saving to a network drive often makes the user
have to 'think' about where the file is going, and makes the life of your
support staff much easier. (I once did a support call because a user "lost
all the files" she'd worked on all day - they'd been saved into the default
directory, which happened to be C:\Windows\Temp, and she deleted everything
in the Temp directory to save space...).


My 2 million cents worth...

Lisa Comeau
Government of Ontario
Ontario, Canada

 From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000=