Rice Storage, File Sharing and Backup Solutions
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.
Please see the following Rice storage, file sharing, and backup solutions below. We will continue to update the quota limits below based on the service offerings by our vendors.
Microsoft OneDrive
Cloud storage solution for file collaboration with internal and external email addresses.
Login to Microsoft OneDrive. Make sure you use your Rice email address.
Storage limits:
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Faculty, staff, graduate students, and researchers: 2 TB default, 2-5 TB by TS&S service request, and 5-25 TB by TS&S service request and departmental review.
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Undergraduate students: 2 TB default, 2-5 TB by TS&S service request.
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Visitors: not available.
For more information, refer to the following:
Box
Cloud storage solution for file collaboration with internal and external email addresses.
Storage limits:
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Faculty and staff: 2 TB.
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Students (graduate and undergraduate): 1 TB.
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Researchers: 2 TB, additional available by TS&S service request.
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Visitors: Visitors are allowed to share this space only if requested by faculty or staff.
For assistance, refer to the following:
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Getting Started with Box [Campus login required]
- Box Training
Google Drive
Cloud storage solution for file collaboration with internal and external email addresses.
Storage limits:
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Faculty and staff: 50 GB default, 100 GB by TS&S service request
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Students (graduate and undergraduate): 10 GB default, 50 GB by TS&S service request
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Researchers: 50 GB
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General visitors: 1 GB
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Academic visitors: 10 GB
For assistance, refer to Google Drive Help.
Department Share
Private Rice storage solution for departments or groups that is shared between all members in the group or department.
Storage limits:
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Faculty, staff, and researchers: 40 GB
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Students (graduate and undergraduate) and visitors are allowed to use Department Share only if requested by faculty or staff.
For more information, create a ticket with the Help Desk.
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.
Storage limits:
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Faculty, staff, and researchers: 500 GB, additional available as a charge back of 7 cents/GB/year.
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Students (graduate and undergraduate) and visitors: not available.
For assistance, refer to Research Data Facility: Quick Start.
Crashplan for Backup for Rice-owned PC and Mac
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.
Storage limits:
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Faculty and staff: unlimited (annual purchase required).
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Students (graduate and undergraduate), researchers, and visitors: not available.
For more information, refer to CrashPlan: Getting Started.
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 listing which data classifications are allowed on the commonly used Rice IT Services; see Approved Services.
- The Information Security Office provides definitions of sensitive and confidential Rice data, see Rice Policy 808.