Re: [ccp4bb]: Storage media revisited

[Hannes Fischer <hannes@if.usp.br>]

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Oh dears, and what do you think about the way I handle this problems ?
:)

A nice and stabe PC with 1 TB storage capacity, 1 GB RAM, Geforce 4 Ti
4600, TFT 18 inch monitor, very good CDRW + DVD+RW and a very good NIC
interfaces for certainly less than U$ 3000,00 you can get this. If you
leave the Geforce, TFT monitor and stuff out you will get this surely for
less than U$ 2000,00 (including a good nobreak, etc...) (a IDE Western
Digital 200Gig HD cost around U$ 250-300 each you will need around 5,
SCSI is almost double the price for the same capacity - no need for
that). PC's are much cheaper than MAC's :) And you can run LINUX, Windows
or Lindows!- if you are interested in such a configuration let me know
:)))

Next step: each user transfers his data via FTP back home. THATS TO
UNREALIBLE, SLOW, NO NO NO.... ok... then stop reading this e-mail please
:)

Home, he tells the guy responsible for the beamline that everything went
ok, I SOLVED THE STRUCTURE, YOU CAN DELETE MY 200GB data set.... he
deletes it in a way he wants (10 GB a day, or 100GB a day...), or let's
say, every data older than 1 months will automatically be deleted or
something like this...

A very good program for downloading everything is HTTrack
(http://www.httrack.com)
works under Windows, Solaris, Unix, Linux (Debian, Mandrake & RedHat,
FreeBSD), source code avaliable for free! You would not need to worry
about unfinished files, etc... 

A password protected website could be provided for users with no FTP
experience so that they could transfer data like using YAHOO's
Briefcase.

At home I save my data the way I want!! On a TAPE, DVD, CD's, ZIP's or
even floppys (The final submitted PDB :).

Last time I was in Brookhaven, my friend trasnferred all his 50GB data to
his personal computer (USA to Brazil) is some hours during data
collection. Easy stuff. Everytime I go to somewhere I store all my files,
presentations, etc... in some virtual place and only download what I
really need locally. I don't worry carring CD's or anything
else.

i'm sorry for taking your time to read this e-mail, 
Hannes

__________________________________________________________________________
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but only God can make a tree.
Alfred Joyce Kilmer


At 10:03 12/11/2002 +0100, Morten Kjeldgaard wrote:

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Like Derek, I have also looked at DVDs for long-term data storage.

There are a number of unclarified issues wrt DVD data storage that
complicate the discussion of DVD as a medium for long-term storage. First
of all, there are six different formats for writing DVDs: (2*DVD-R,
DVD-RW, DVD-RAM, DVD+RW, DVD+R). Some of the newer DVD writers are said to
support several of these formats, but which format will survive depends on
how the market evolves. Apple supports DVD-RW in the Mac while most others
are going with DVD+RW.

The DVD demystified FAQ (http://www.dvddemystified.com/) is a good place
to get information, although it mostly deals with DVDs for movies.

While most of us are probably fed-up with DAT tapes, perhaps you were a
bit hasty to dismiss tapes for storage, Derek! A lot is happening on that
front these days, but again we are faced with a multitude of different
formats. However, all of them allow storage of at least 10Gb, which is
sufficient for several synchrotron datasets. The ADR2 format from
http://www.onstream.com (a Philips subsidiary) is especially interesting
since it is a rather inexpensive solution, has high reliability, capacity
up to 120Gb and boasts Mac and Linux support.

IMHO the DVD vs. tape discussion for diffraction data storage is a tie. It
is a PAIN to master a DVD, there is no good software for Linux, you need
disk space to hold the data _twice_, and it is slow. Once mastered, you
can course read the data directly from the DVD. There is lots of software
for writing tapes, it is rather fast and painless, but if you need to
re-process your images, you have to reload them from the tape. Both DVD
and tapes are fragile media, the DVD can get scratched, and the tape can
turn into linguini.

The cost of the media is not the most important parameter, it is trivial
considering the value of a dataset (!!!), including all the man-hours that
went into expression, purification, crystallization, the value of the
sychrotron time, etc, etc. You don't wanna know this number... :o)

These were my 0.02 Euros = $ 0.0202519 worth...

/Morten

--
Morten Kjeldgaard <mok@imsb.au.dk>
Department of Molecular Biology, Aarhus University
Gustav Wieds Vej 10 C, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
Lab +45 89425026 * Mobile +45 89428063 * Fax +45 86123178