Organise your Research Drive Space¶
Overview
This is the Organising your Space page, part of VU Tools → Research Drive in the A-LIFE RDM collection.
This page covers:
Supporting materials: Best Practices — Organising data
Authors: Irene Martorelli, Brett Olivier — Last modification: 2026-08-02 — Version: 0.2.0
How Research Drive is structured¶
Research Drive is a project-based cloud storage. When your space is created, you get a single root folder linked to your project, prefixed with your faculty code (e.g. BETA_project-name).
Within your project space you can create your own folder structure, share specific folders with collaborators, and manage access at the folder level.
Research Drive is designed for active storage — it is not an archiving solution. When your project is complete, your data should be moved to Yoda or another archiving platform.
Organise before uploading to Research Drive¶
Research Drive is a storage and sharing platform, not a file manager. We recommend organising your data locally before uploading, for a few practical reasons:
- Folder structure determines sharing — sharing in Research Drive works at the folder level, so a well-structured folder hierarchy makes access management much easier.
- Consistent naming saves time — when data is later moved to Yoda for archiving, a clean and consistent naming convention avoids extra work at that stage.
- Avoid duplicates — moving and copying large files between folders without a clear structure can quickly lead to duplicate files.
Follow our general guide for support on directory structure, file naming and file versioning. It applies to any tool or device, not just Research Drive.
Best Practices — Organising data
What next?
Once your space is organised, continue to Step 3 — Transferring Data.