You can use the following storage services for documents that are personal to you:
- OneDrive: Microsoft's cloud-based file hosting service, which is available to people with a University Microsoft account. It offers 1TB of storage space for staff and students, and 100GB for visitors and guests.
- Google Drive: Google's cloud-based file hosting service gives each member of the University 500GB of free file storage.
- Dropbox Business: Dropbox's paid-for cloud-based file hosting service offers unlimited storage, which is available to Cambridge students and staff at the heavily discounted rate of £65.78 per year (excluding VAT).
We recommend OneDrive
University Information Services (UIS) recommend using OneDrive for everyday documents and files that are personal to you. OneDrive integrates with Office 365 including Teams, Microsoft Word and Outlook. It is also free, offers generous storage space and you can use it when working remotely.
You should not use OneDrive for working documents that your colleagues or peers need access to. These should be stored in a SharePoint Team site linked to a team in Microsoft Teams. This means that other people can access them if you’re away or once you have left the University.
OneDrive is also not suitable for:
- health data where individual patients are named or can be identified
- data that is subject to a specific contractual agreement that specifies a particular storage method (that is not OneDrive)
- data that is subject to a specific contractual agreement that prohibits storage in a public cloud service
You can move existing files on local drives over to OneDrive so that you have access to them anywhere.
Compare storage services
Remote access
- OneDrive: yes
- Google Drive: yes
- Dropbox Business: yes
Sharing documents
- OneDrive: yes, you can share internally and externally. Please be aware that any documents in your personal folders will get deleted when you leave the University. A SharePoint Team site linked to a team in Microsoft Teams works better if you want to work collaboratively on documents within a team or a group.
- Google Drive: yes, you can share internally and externally. Please be aware that any documents in your personal drive will get deleted when you leave the University. A shared drive works better if you want to work collaboratively on documents within a team or a group.
- Dropbox Business: yes, you can share internally and externally
Costs
- OneDrive: free
- Google Drive: free
- Dropbox Business: £65.78 per year (excluding VAT)
Storage space
- OneDrive: 1TB (100GB for guests or visitors)
- Google Drive: 500GB
- Dropbox Business: Unlimited
How can long can you recover files
- OneDrive: 90 days
- Google Drive: 30 days
- Dropbox Business: 180 days
Where data is stored
- OneDrive: UK data centres
- Google Drive: Worldwide (EU-US Privacy Shield)
- Dropbox Business: EU data centres
Security
Each storage service has been assessed for the type of data that it can securely store. The University uses 4 levels to classify the data along with the impact of the data being disclosed, lost, modified or destroyed. You can see the full list of data security classifications which explains each level and impact.
- OneDrive: high impact data (level 2)
- Google Drive: medium impact data (level 2)
- Dropbox Business: medium impact data (level 2)
Get access to these services
- OneDrive: Find out more about OneDrive
- Google Drive: Find out more about Google Drive
- Dropbox: Find out more about Dropbox Business