NMR Facility Data Archives

Facility Data Archives

When a spectrometer disk capacity is >90% full, or the data on a hard drive is greater than 4 months old, the oldest 500 MB of user's data are archived to CDROM. After the data is archived, the data is then removed from the spectrometer. Data archived prior to Nov 27, 1995 is also available on other media; contact the NMR Facility Staff for more information.

I500/AM500 DATA

I400 DATA

Gem300 DATA

VXR400 DATA

Status of Spectrometer Disk Capacities

How to Protect "Reference" Data Files from being Automatically Archived and Deleted from the Spectrometer

After old data is archived, this old data is deleted from the spectrometer. If you have "reference" data files that you often retrieve to compare with current results, you can keep these files on the spectrometer by creating a sub-directory called REFDIR (note the upper-case letters) in your home directory, and saving these "reference" data files in this REFDIR directory. However:

• Data files in your REFDIR will not be archived. If you want to archive a "reference" data file, you can save a copy of the same data in your home directory and in your REFDIR directory; the data in your home directory will be archived.

• The total disk space of REFDIR and it's contents may not occupy more than 5 MBytes at any time. Please contact the NMR Facility Staff if you need to store more than 5 MBytes of data files on the spectrometer for an extended time.

To make a REFDIR sub-directory, click on Main Menu / File / More / Set Dir / More / Create New, and then type REFDIR for the sub-directory name.

To change to your REFDIR sub-directory, click on Main Menu / File / More / Set Dir, and click on your REFDIR listing in your home directory, then click Change.

To change to your home directory, click on Main Menu / File / More / Set Dir / Home.

Individual Data Archives

Members of the Department of Chemistry may archive their own data onto several different types of media in the NMR Facility. Contact the NMR Facility Staff or for more information about these media.

CDROM

Data can be recorded to CDROM disks using the NMR Facility CD Recorder. CDROM archiving cost $5.00 per CD when the user "Burns" his or her own CD and the data is NMR data. If the data is not NMR data or if the NMR staff makes the CD for the user, then the cost will be higher according to the amount of time spent on making the CD. The blank CD cost is $2.00, or you may bring your own. CDROMs can be formatted for UNIX, DOS, Windows, or Mac, or some or all of these formats. Detailed instructions on creating a CD at the NMR Facility can be found at CD Archiving. Some Frequently Asked Questions, FAQ's ,with answers can be found at No questions are stupid, some are just sillier than others.

Disk capacity is ~600 MB, but the NMR Facility staff recommends a maximum disk capacity of 550MBytes, and even less if you have many small files. This "extra capacity" is necessary to write an "index" or a "table of contents" onto the disk. If you format your disk for all operating systems, or you write many files to disk, the "table of contents" will be very large. For example, when the NMR Facility staff archives hundreds of 1MB files to CDROM using all four formats, the "table of contents" requires ~200MB, and only ~400MB remains for writing data to disk.

CDROMs are WORM (Write Once, Read Many) devices---once you write a CDROM, the disk can't be overwritten. You may however bring your own CDRW disks which may be overwritten.  Also, "multi-session writing" (writing some data to CDROM today, writing more tomorrow, etc.) is NOT supported. You can write much less than ~400-550MB of data to CDROM (e.g., some NMR Facility users prefer to archive all of their NMR Facility data when they graduate, which may only total ~30MB). However, you may want to first collect all data that you want to archive to CDROM onto a ZIP, optical, or hard disk; when you reach a capacity of ~400-500MB, then you can write a CDROM.

ZIP disk

ZIP disks have a capacity of 100 MBytes. The NMR Facility does not supply ZIP disks, but they are available at many retailers for ~$15. These disks are an excellent media for temporary data and file storage for individual users. The disk can be formatted for SGI. Data from the Sun spectrometer host workstations can be transfered to the ZIP disk in the ZIP drive on a SGI workstation. The ZIP disk works just like a hard drive---data can be written onto the disk, read from the disk, and deleted from the disk.

3.5" floppy disk

Floppy disks can be formatted for Sun and SGI and Mac (HFS) OR Sun and SGI and DOS (FAT). Each disk has a capacity of 1.44 MBytes. Due to this limited capacity, the NMR Facility does not recommend data archival to floppy disks. However, floppy disks are useful for temporary storage of 1D and small 2D data files, 1D and small 2D spectra (e.g., postscript files), and other non-data files (e.g., macros, pulse programs, frequency lists). The NMR Facility does not provide floppy disks; floppy disks are available in the Chemistry Department Storeroom.

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Last updated: Mar. 17, 2004
URL: http://nmr.chem.indiana.edu/data_archives.html
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