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In My Drive, the Principal Investigator (PI),or data owner, can create a hierarchical structure of folders for lab members’ data. Under the UC San Diego licensing agreement with Google, users have unlimited storage space.
NOTE: Per call with Google rep Jeff Nessen on 2/10/21, unlimited data storage capacity will soon go away for our users. No date is currently available, nor is the future data storage capacity per user known at this time but users are cautioned.
We recommend:
- The folder at the highest level not be shared.
- Applying the Principle of Least Privilege, where users are given access only as necessary. This can help to maximize data security, including fewer opportunities for accidental data overwrites or deletions.
- Assigning lab members as a 'contributor', allows for files or folders to be created and shared, but may not be deleted.
- Assigning lab members with 'content manager' access allows for deleting of files or folders at the folder level where access has been granted.
- Consider assigning specific lab members the role of 'content manager' to allow for deletions and cleanup at the level which that member will be the primary contributor (e.g. labmember1 is content manager for folder Project1_LabMember1 but only contributor to the parent folder Project1Name).
- Creating nested folders within the parent folder:
- For each lab member
- For subset(s) of members who share data
- Using a consistent naming convention (e.g., Project1_LabMemberName).
- Sharing only necessary folders with individual lab member-user.
- As appropriate, group leaders create student folders under their own folder and share individually.
- Note: The Drive owner will have to approve share requests made by group leaders or other delegates working under the PI's permissions.
- Limiting the number of users who can access a particular folder in order to minimize the potential for accidental data overwrite or deletion.
- Developing lab procedures that reflect effective practices for data safeguards, oversight, and retention. We do not recommend that students save a separate copy because of potential data synching issues. However, these recommendations do not prohibit anyone from saving a separate copy of their data locally or in their personal Google Drives.
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