Making the most of UBbox

UBbox user.

Katarina Silvestri, grad student and research project manager in the Center for Literacy and Reading Instruction, logs on to her UBbox account.

By Kenneth Kashif Thomas

Published November 10, 2016 This content is archived.

Have you logged into UBbox yet? UB now offers unlimited, secure cloud-based storage for students, faculty and staff, so you can store all of your documents and data.

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Kenneth Kashif Thomas (UB Student, Class of 2017) is an Economics major with an interest in Journalism. He is the 2016-17 Senior Features Editor of the UB Spectrum student newspaper.

Keeping in step with the technological progressions of universities across the country, UBbox’s easily-accessible cloud storage allows for 24/7 access and easy file collaboration.

Katarina Silvestri, a grad student and research project manager in the Center for Literacy and Reading Instruction, says services like this are a necessity for students. "I used to use Dropbox, but we started running out of space and it wasn’t financially feasible to upgrade to the premium service," she said. "I think it’s really important in a doctoral program, if you’re working with multiple professors and students I can’t stress enough that a student having this kind of space is necessary. Time is precious and everything needs to be streamlined."

Some customers have found that the service comes in handy for personal data transfers, due to the looming threat of unsuspecting hardware failures. This is what Michael Conroy, Assistant Director of Web Services, Marketing and Communications with the Provost’s office, discovered as he was moving data from his desktop to his laptop.

"It’s saved me and my projects when my hard drive failed," he said. "Luckily I had already had uploaded documents on UBbox. It’s definitely a good direction for anyone that goes to UB."

With UBbox, you can access data from any device. UBbox also offers he ability to share (and unshare) specific files and folders, while also creating a leveled access system, a feature that Silvestri and her colleagues find useful.

"The documents and data will be here longer than I will be, since I’m a grad student and those documents need to be there when I leave, so obviously I’d have to be removed," Silvestri said.

Much like Silverstri, Mojdeh Pajoutan, a PhD candidate researching ergonomics and biomechanics, found UBbox useful for file back-ups.

"It saved my life!" said Pajoutan. "It all started when my computer crashed and I couldn’t retrieve any data on my laptop using thumb drives or external hard drives. It’s like Dropbox, but I like the unlimited space more."

UBbox is also compatible with both Android and iOS, so you can access all of your data from your mobile device. UBbox also offers HD video streaming and image previews.

There are also large-scale improvements coming to the service in the near future, including improvements in HD and 3D imaging, and a new customer interface.

According to Fotak Veljko, Assistant Professor in Finance at UB, "Compared to other similar software that I have tried in the past, it has two advantages. First, it works. While that seems like a simple thing, some of the other alternatives I tried just did not work as advertised – would corrupt files, create duplicates. Second, it is pretty nimble and does not use too many resources while running in the background."

As of October 2016, UBbox currently has over 57 terabytes of data stored from over 19,000 customers.

Subhadeep Karan, a PhD student in Computer Science, added, "Overall, it’s an awesome tool for every student in UB. My favorite feature would be definitely the large storage provided for students, which allows me to work without worrying about running out of space. Additionally, I find the ability to share files with your friends and co-workers is amazing."