FACS Data Taxi Recommendation
This page provides recommendations to users of the Emory Vaccine Center FACS facility (EVC-FCC) for how to move data from the flow cytometer computer -- especially the LSR-II -- to their own computer. These recommendations will apply until we acquire a dedicated computer server on which we can store flow cytometry data files. We are working towards acquisiton of such a server (10/12/2005), but cannot estimate when one will be in place.
Current practice
Currently, most users of the EVC-FCC instruments are burning their data to either CDs or DVDs, but this process is slow and some users are plagued by confusion over incompatible DVD formats. Network transfer of data files is available for users of the FACS Caliburs, but the computers attached to the LSR-II and FACS Aria are not networked because they are vulnerable to attack.
Recommended new practice
We have recently installed a FireWire card on the LSR-II computer and have tested data transfer to a mobile FireWire drive. Transfer to a FireWire drive from the LSR-II computer is very fast -- we transferred almost 2 GB of data in about 4 minutes. A mobile FireWire drive does not require an external power source, and we have a FireWire cable attached to the LSR-II computer. Here's what we recommend:
FireWire Drive
We have used a 60 GB LaCie Mobile Hard Drive with USB20 and FireWire ports. The current (10/12/2005) price of this drive from LaCie is $149.99. It is small and lightweight, and as noted above, it does not require an external power adapter. I recommend that each lab buy at least one, and it can be shared among everyone in the lab.
Out of the box, the drive is FAT32 formatted, and we do not recommend that you reformat the drive. While other drive formats such as NTFS may be more robust, they will create difficult problems with file permissions that you will very much want to avoid.
You may wish to choose another vendor for FireWire drives. These will probably work just fine, but we haven't tested other alternatives.
Recommended practice
Under no circumstances should you regard a mobile FireWire drive as suitable for long-term archival data storage. We strongly recommend that you regard your mobile FireWire drive as a very fast data taxi, and that you transfer data off of it onto an internal hard drive as soon as you can (within 24 hours). Once you have done so, you should also back up your data onto suitable media, such as CD or DVD (make two copies).
Once you have ensured that you have copies of your data on the internal drive of your computer workstation and on CD or DVD, only then should you delete your data from both the LSR-II and from your FireWire HD data taxi.