T2B Deletion Policy

This page details the way accounts from former users are handled at T2B.

IMPORTANT: This policy is valid for all users of T2B, except for staff members. For them, a special system is in place that protects their data.

General information

T2B has a lot of users coming and leaving every year. They create a lot of data that might be important to the rest of the collaboration, even after they left.
This makes the removal of old accounts and their associated files something to handle carefully. But, unfortunately, disk space is not unlimited and therefore we must regularly clean our disks.
We, therefore, designed a removal system based on the last accessing time (and thus usage) of the files of the user that has left the collaboration as we have no means of knowing whether the files are still important or not.

User disks

This section only pertains to what is done to the user directory (/user/<username>)

User disks will be cleaned according to the following schedule:
When no file in the user directory has been accessed for the last

• 12 months: the user will no longer have access to T2B, all the files will be archived and so are still recoverable
• 24 months: all files will now be deleted from our storage

Mass storage

This section pertains to what is done to data on the mass storage (/pnfs/iihe/<experiment>/store/user/<username>)

Files here will once be deleted once the user disk files (see above) are removed. This leaves 24 months for the collaborators to copy the data over to their own directories.
If the files in /pnfs have been accessed in this time frame (24 months), the responsible staff member will be contacted in order to verify that the data can be deleted. If the data has not been accessed in this time frame, it will be deleted without asking.

Protect your important data

If you leave the T2B, it is thus very important to safeguard your data if you think that your collaborator might still need it. Therefore you need to ask your promotor or collaborator to copy all the relevant data over to their home directory.