Voila, here is another users opinion... Our Cellquest Macs are Ethernet connected to the campus network, we have 230 Mb MO Disks for personal data storage (for our > 130 users), and CD-R Writer for data archives. As soon as the 230 MO Disks are full, we burn them on CD. I use a Yamaha CDR 100 (4X burning takes only 12-15 min/CD) and Toast Pro 3.01 on the PowerMac. This software is completely transparent, cheap and peanuts to use. Haven't fried a single CD-R (and burned more than 100 so far...). For file transfer from HP or PC, we use the Ethernet connection, and you can easily burn PC CD's on the PowerMac. With respect to the ease of use and installation of Windows CD-R Software etc, I would "strongly" recommend to connect the CD-R Writer to the Mac. The Mac is much more open towards WinWorld than the other way around..:) Of course you may need a 1 Gb HD for temporary data storage, but you can burn directly from 230 Mb or 1.3 Gb MO disks onto the CD if your Mac is fast enough (PowerMac's usually are). We use MO disks as intermediate storage, as it allows people to save their analysis files together with the data, and they only transfer everything on the CD once they've pretty much finished it all... if you burn the data directly on the CD, it's a bit difficult to store the analysis pages together with the data... Of course you could use a network and file server for the intermediate storage as well (depends if your users are network savvy - ours are mostly not... and you also have to consider access speed over the net, as FACS files tend to be large... Voila hope that gives you at least one point of view. Don't hesitate to ask, if you need more details... Cheers, Matthias _____________________________________________________________________________ Matthias Haury Flowcytometry Dept Immunology Institut Pasteur mhaury@pasteur.fr Tel: 33 (01) 40 61 31 29 Fax: 33 (01) 45 68 86 39 _____________________________________________________________________________ At 12:49 +1000 29/05/97, Peter Chapple wrote: >>I know this subject was discussed some time ago but I need to know some >>more information. >We are interested in purchasing a data archive system >>that will serve our entire lab. In the lab >we have a FACS Vantage, >>FACScan, FACS Caliber, FACS Trak and a Discovery Image >analyzer. We >>want a single archive system that will be compatible with both the >>Macintosh >platforms attached to the flow cytometers as well as the IBM >>Dos system attached to the Image >analyzer. Considering the size of the >>files to be saved we are currently leaning toward either a >writable CD >>or an Optical drive. Price is a consideration but we want something >>flexible and >useful for all the systems. >>Has anyone tried to do such a thing in their lab? What is the available >>advice based on >personal experience? >>Your patience and consideration of my question is much appreciated. >>Haywood Pyle >>King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center >>Flow Cytometry Core Facility >>pyle@kfshrc.edu.sa > > >My two cents worth on data archiving are as follows: > >We have are in a similar position in that we have a Windows NT network and >a Macintosh attached to our BD cytometer. The Cytometer has a Jaz drive >for storing data during acquisition and this data is later archived to >CD-R. To get around the *two platforms* problems I have connected the Mac >to the network and installed an FTP daemon on it. This allows us to simply >FTP files onto the PC with our analysis software and CD-R burner, you can >then easily do either off-line analysis or archiving on that machine. > >If considering CD-R carefully consider the mastering software that comes >with it. I have seen colleagues have a number of disasters buring >multi-session CD's with CD-R mastering software that did not provide safe >multi-session/volume recording. We are using software called *Gear* and >have been happy with it - the documentation (in PDF format) is fair-good. >It would be interesting to hear what other members of the list use :) > >Peter Chapple >Melbourne AUSTRALIA
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Apr 03 2002 - 11:49:48 EST