Strategies to manage your data storage.
Managing available disk space has been a problem for computer operators for as long as there has been computers. It's perplexing that disk space management is so often a neglected or misunderstood facet of maintaining our home PCs and mobile devices.
The problem is just as prevalent on network and cloud shares, where so many of us store our important work files.
"It would be very difficult if not impossible for your staff to reproduce months of documents. Most photos can never be replaced, as they capture a moment in time."
What data do you really need to keep?
There are essentially two types of storage on any computing devices – replaceable/system data and unique/user data:
- System data is information that is distributed widely and is (assumed to be) replaceable, such as an installation of Microsoft Windows or Adobe Photoshop
Personal or unique data (typically referred to as simply 'data') is information that is unique or irreplaceable, such as personal photos, documents, Windows configuration settings, voice message files or a database of any size, whether it be a local butcher's MYOB file or the Australian Tax Office’s databases. - Unique data is the primary concern here, as its loss will be much more damaging than a loss of system data. Where software such as MYOB, Windows 10 or Photoshop can be re-installed from disk or download, it's the configuration of these programs or the files created by them that can't easily be replaced. It would be very difficult if not impossible for your staff to reproduce months of documents. Most photos can never be replaced, as they capture a moment in time.
Over time your data space requirements will continue to increase. The consequences of allowing your data storage to fill are at best an inconvenience, at worst can be serious.
A Windows PC that fills up its system drive (typically the C: drive) can suffer severely degraded performance, system errors, log spam and possibly data loss and system failure. A network or cloud data store will throw errors or reject files if full.
Four key strategies for managing available data space
Consider the following strategies for managing your available space:
- Organise your data
- Archive your data on a regular basis
- Plan ahead when purchasing
- Monitor and be pro-active
Organise your data
Deciding what data should be left always available (hot storage), available at short notice (warm storage) or available on a rare occasion (cold storage) is a discipline. Organising data into a hierarchy and keeping the integrity of this hierarchy is another discipline.
These disciplines should be encouraged through education and policy/procedure. Well-organised data is much easier to manage, back up and recover in an emergency. Haphazard data is likely to be missed in a selective backup, or if data is too scattered it may be considered too costly to recover.
When it comes to available disk space management, these same disciplines relate to planning, prioritising and archiving of your organisation's data.
Archive your data
One of the first strategies you should look at when running out of storage space is archiving. Data available on your server's file share or on your own hard drive is available quickly at any time.
Consider archiving data that is rarely or never accessed. Data archived and stored for irregular use is referred to as warm storage, and data that is rarely or never accessed is referred to as cold storage.
An example of cold storage may be a small business keeping records from 10 years ago on external hard drives in a safe, while warm storage may be keeping data on a NAS device rather than taking up space on a fast (and expensive) network file server or cloud-based file depository.
Plan ahead when purchasing
When you are buying a server, PC, or mobile device, consider how much you need at the end of the expected life of the device, rather than how much storage space and CPU power you need now.
It may seem excessive to buy a 1TB SSD now for your new laptop, but if you're currently using 300GB of data, is it unreasonable to consider the possibility of that data tripling over 3-4 years? Data usage typically accelerates over time, rather than increasing at a steady rate.
Server storage is especially expensive. Running out of server storage space can be very expensive, with inconvenience, possible data loss and staff frustration to consider. We've seen plenty of occurrences where a customer has asked to add a hard drive to a server (ideally RAID expects any new hard drives to be identical to the incumbent drives) and found there are none to buy, because that model is no longer produced or in stock.
Monitor your available space and be proactive
Make sure that checking available storage is a habit. Diamond’s Managed Services Agreement (MSA) customers have their available space checked as part of our Technical Optimisation team’s checklists during maintenance visits.
If you find your space getting above the 75% used mark, check it more often to see if this is a trend. Plan ahead and get quotes to see if increasing your available storage space is possible.
- Do you have any drive slots available on your server/PC?
- Is it possible to increase your cloud storage to a larger capacity?
- Is expansion a viable expense (ROI), and what would be the cost of not expanding?
Fixing the problem when your available space is gone or nearly gone means you can't solve the issue strategically, and will likely be the more expensive and inconvenient option in the long run.
For those using cloud storage, increasing storage is very easy but could result in a hefty increase in costs.
Be proactive and avoid problems using tools and monitoring
There are both paid and free tools available to administrators and users to check the available storage space on a server, PC or mobile device. All operating systems include some way to check the amount of data stored and the amount remaining, and Diamond IT’s Managed Support Agreement customers have our agent installed that notifies our support staff when a threshold is passed.
Products like TreeSize are excellent for searching your hard drive for the folders/files taking up much more of your storage space than you expected.
Act now to avoid the “out of storage blues”.
Summary - the key strategies for data storage management
The key strategies for managing your data storage are to purchase for future needs, use policies/procedures/education to assist your end users to get the most value from the space they have, and leverage the tools available to manage storage proactively as it naturally depletes. Don’t forget about archiving data that’s not required to be highly-available.
How can Diamond help?
Diamond IT is here to assist and advise you on how to manage your data storage through all of the above strategies.
Our Sales team can assist with buying the right amount of storage for your current future needs, our consulting team can assist with setting strategies, policies and procedures to make the most of your current storage and our Support team can assist when you come across storage problems.
Give us a call on 1300 307 907 or contact us via the form below.
