UNH offers guidance and solutions for storing research data that currently reside on personal or lab computers. The best practice for data storage is to have at least two additional copies of your data, one of which is stored in a location other than where you keep your computer (such as cloud storage).
Active research data and duplicate copies of research data storage are tools for keeping your data safe during your project's lifetime. To view data storage options at UNH please use the storage solutions grid found on our Storage Offerings page. You can also work interactively with our Data Finder Tool by answering a few questions and seeing what options fit. Information on long-term storage and preservation or archiving data can be found in Long-term Preservation.
Data Security and Compliance
If you are working with sensitive or regulated data, such as HIPAA, FERPA, CUI, or human subjects data, visit Regulated Data for more information.
Considerations for Selecting Storage
Selecting appropriate storage for your data depends on data security requirements, the volume of data, and ease of access. The aim of effective data storage is to protect your data from accidental disclosure or loss.
- For large data and specialized services. If you have large amounts of data or data that require specialized services, contact the USNH Enterprise IT Research Computing Center for more information about purchasing a file server.
- For restricted data. For storing copies of restricted or regulated data, please contact the USNH Enterprise IT Research Computing Center to discuss available storage alternatives.
- For human subjects research data. See Data Security in Research Involving Human Subjects.
- For instrumentation output. If your instrumentation output saves directly to local storage, you will need to identify a strategy for saving a copy of the data to other storage solutions. Please contact the Instrumentation Center.
- For high-performance computing clusters. If you have storage needs associated with the high-performance computing clusters, please contact the USNH Enterprise IT Research Computing Center.
- For non-digital, printed materials. Consider creating digital surrogates that can serve as backup copies to your original documents. Scan paper lab notebooks, survey results, notes, or other printed material and store them with your digital materials.
