Rice files and data can be stored in the space allocated to, or associated with, your Rice NetID. Visitors and external collaborators require sponsorship by Rice faculty or staff; selected storage solutions may be shared between the sponsor and guest. 

NOTICE: In November 2021, OIT announced changes to many storage services and will continue to update the below quota limits based on the service offerings by our vendors.

Rice Storage Solution Links and Definitions

• OneDrive: Cloud storage solution for file collaboration with internal and external email addresses. 
• Box: Cloud storage solution for file collaboration with internal and external email addresses.
• Google Drive: Cloud storage solution for file collaboration with internal and external email addresses. 
• Department Share Drive: Private Rice storage solution for departments or groups that is shared between all members in the group or department. 
  
• Research Data Facility: To accommodate the research community's growing need to store large datasets and facilitate collaboration among research groups, the Center for Research Computing has made available a variety of services collectively known as the Research Data Facility (RDF). The RDF consists of a combination of cloud-based and on-premises storage services that are robust and secure, flexible enough to meet a wide range of use cases, and scalable to meet future data storage needs.
• Crashplan: is a cost-recovery service that will automatically backup targeted files on Rice-owned PCs and Macs. For approximately $82.56 annually per person, it can be purchased for both office and lab computers; the size of the backup is unlimited, but it can only backup and retain a copy data and files that currently exist on the computer - it is not a cumulative storage service.

Email is not recommended as a storage solution. 

An email account is not a good storage solution for important data or correspondence. Choose one of the storage locations described above to retain important data and correspondence. 

Keep NetID and Rice data secure

• Keep your NetID secure, do not use your Rice NetID or password for non-Rice accounts to store critical or sensitive Rice data. 
• Keep Rice data secure, do not store critical or sensitive Rice data on external solutions because non-contractual solutions pose a significant security risk to the university.  
• The Information Security Office maintains a matrix of which classifications of data are allowed on commonly used Rice OIT Service, see Approved Services.
• The Information Security Office provides definitions of sensitive and confidential Rice data, see Rice Policy 808.