The shared Z drive, a networked storage drive accessible on most of the College computers, will be eliminated on Friday, Jan. 20, said executive director of ITS John Ellis in an e-mail to the campus body Dec. 22.
The drive was originally created as a temporary storage space for large files that could not be handled by the then prevalent use of floppy disks with their limited storage capacity. This need has been greatly diminished by the use of portable digital devices such as flash drives and and online storage options such as Dropbox and Google Apps.
Ellis also cited the ability for anyone on a campus computer to access the drive and copy, change, move and delete other people’s files as a major factor in the decision of the Academic Technology Committee to discontinue the drive.
The original date for elimination was Dec. 28 but, as stated in a later e-mail, that date was pushed back to Jan. 20 because several students contacted ITS because they were unaware that the drive is for temporary storage of files, and is typically deleted at the end of each semester.
Executive director of ITS John Ellis can be contacted at ellisj@mail.strose.edu.
