Even if your data management practices are pristine, if your data is at risk because there are no backups of it or the storage medium isn't reliable, then you will have trouble. Luckily, we have some resources at NYU and a few good rules of thumb to help you!
NYU offers several resources for storing data:
NYU Drive for faculty, staff, and students (all-purpose file sharing via Google Apps for Education)
NYU Research Workspace for faculty, staff, and by request, students, designed for fast access to large datasets
NYU Box for faculty, staff, and by request, students, geared towards secure data needs
NYU Stream for faculty, staff, and students, specifically for audio, video, and image files with a focus on collaborative editing and linking with NYU Classes
NYU High Performance Computing Backups and Storage for those already using HPC for a project via the /archive data storage
NYU ITS has a helpful chart comparing NYU storage options.
We recommended that backups be saved in open or standard file formats, and not be compressed or encrypted (though sensitive data may require encryption). The UK Data Service also has a nice guide to data backups. Do not use CDs or DVDs as these have been known to fail frequently.
NYU Box has been designed and deployed for sensitive and restricted data, including HIPAA-compliance, and should be used for any short-term file storage needs requiring such protection. However, researchers with schools, departments, or units that deploy their own secure data storage for sensitive or restricted data should use that service.
For information about NYU Box and restricted data, see the ITS NYU Box FAQs on sensitive data and managing permissions.
You may also wish to consult NYU's policy on transmitting and storing sensitive data and NYU's policy on data classification.
During the data cleaning and data analysis phases, it is often necessary to push and pull data from an external storage source efficiently so as to integrate that data into a workflow. The following tools can provide useful ways of doing this: