I have been interested to see that the information management issues discussed in Computing (Keep your data safe) tend to focus on solutions based on file servers, typically clustered to provide backup facilities.

There seems to be a large amount of disk space available for use on the many workstations on networks. My current workstation, which isn't what you'd call top of the range by any means, has an 80GB hard drive and nearly 50 per cent of its space free.

Maybe we should think about using users' hard drives as part of the solution, whether as local caches to reduce network use and increase speed, or as file server backup. While there would be a risk of any single system failing, if the same data was stored on multiple workstations it could reduce IT server costs.

Mike Raven