Best Storage Solution for Undergrad Students

[DavidLambert1]

ArcGIS Pro 3.0

What is the best storage site for GIS data for undergraduates in a computer lab-based class?  Students cannot store on the lab computers as the data and projects are wiped nightly.  MS One-Drive may work or students Google drive.  Not sure if MyESRI site is a good solution for students, seems clunky.  I will ask them to backup on thumb drives but inevitably, some students will lose the device.  Looking for the most accessible solution.

[DanPatterson]

Package Project (Data Management)—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation

work local, then package the project and backup onto a thumb drive and/or a virtual one.

Do not suggest that they use the googly-thing as part of their project since things won't always go well..

We did that for years before project packaging with simply zip and copy solutions

[DavidLambert1]

Thanks  that is something I will look into

[mrmark · Accepted solution]

David,

Any cloud option (Dropbox, Box, Onedrive, Google Drive) + Geodatabases = corruption sooner or later. You can read Esri's official stance and why it doesn't work in this technical support document.

Because our university pushed everyone to Box.com a few years ago, our Geography department has purchased a large file server and provides a network share that students can access. Geography majors and students taking GIS courses get a folder that is automatically mapped to a drive letter when they sign in. The library provides some network space for others, but it is not permanent. Civil Engineering also provides some network storage to their students but it is very limited. 

We experimented with a product that allowed mapping cloud storage to drive letters and would force local caching of any files used prior to opening / use. While we didn't have problems with data corruption, it was PAINFULLY slow. In testing it was MUCH faster to just have people copy their project folder / data from the cloud service to the local machine. Work on it in ArcGIS, then copy it back. It works fine for smaller projects and datasets, but isn't feasible when they have terrabytes of imagery etc. 

For those without access to a file server on the network, external hard drives are the most common solution

[DavidLambert1]

I will share this with our IT folks.   For the most part, we just need to store layer and data files.  This seems like the most manageable solution.  

[AyanPalit]

@DavidLambert1 MyEsri is certainly not intended for project data. ArcGIS Online does have options to host data layers. I second options suggested by @mrmark 

[DavidLambert1]

I'm still new to ArcGIS online, coming from ArcGIS Desktop world, so I have to do some additional research on using Online.

[BrianBaldwin]

@DavidLambert1 - What university are you at? If you want to jump on a call and talk through it/discuss it - just let me know. Feel free to send me an e-mail: bbaldwin@esri.com 

[BrianBaldwin]

@DavidLambert1 - The other option - and one that @AyanPalit mentions - is having students simply host their data in ArcGIS Online.

It really depends on the workflow - but if students are using layers/data for visualization - a faculty member can pre-publish those and provide them in a group for students to access. Students could then save a copy of the map and modify the symbology, layers, pop-ups, etc. 

If they need to conduct analysis or modify the actual data (calculate values, etc.) - they could host their own data and then access those layers with either ArcGIS Pro or ArcGIS Online.

Let us know how things go as well!

[SaraJL]

We use Network Drives on Windows! We have a lot of small research groups and one GIS course - it's fairly easy to setup, and we can create permissions for the faculty to manage it (so it just doesn't have to be IT).

• The only thing I would recommend with the network drive route is come up with a couple policies for the data retention - otherwise if there are a lot of groups using it, the data can pile up pretty quickly and the storage can get crazy.
• We let courses keep access to the Network Drives for the duration of the semester, and then everyone has to backup their data to a source of their choice. Long-term research groups can keep access as long as it is needed.

In the past, I've also had a lot of success with Dropbox. Dropbox is excellent for vector/raster data, and also if you have to use ArcGIS servers for anything.

Google Drive works great for everything except rasters! For a lot of general data work and anything that is vector data, I'll have students store data in a shared drive or My Drive. Anything that requires rasters or raster tools has to be on a Network Drive (or anything that doesn't create a space in the folder pathname)