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Concerning storage, I think the best is a mixed technology approach. We
have magneto-optical 230 and 640 3"1/2 drives to acquire the data directly
onto (on the Mac - of course !!!), then people can take their disks and
analyse whereever they want. As soon as they have a 230 full, we copy the
stuff on CD-R. On the Mac using Toast-Pro it is AS EASY as copying to a
hard disk (maybe the PC world is still behind according to Neal...).
This is economically the cheapest solution for a 100-150 user core facility
with more than 3 different analysis stations.
DVD won't be affordable in another 1 1/2 to 2 years, and during this time
you very well pay off your CD-R investments, and CD-Rs will be staying in
the market for at least another 5 years, then you might have to copy them
to DVD but who knows what will happen in 5 years.
I also agree with Jim on data security - make duplicate copies of each, and
keep one in a safe location. It's enough that somebody cracks the CD
(playing frisbee..) and 650 Mb are gone down the drain...
Hope that helps some of you to decide..
cheers and happy buying,
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 10:01 -0500 13/03/97, Neal Benson wrote:
>Chalk up my vote for CD-recordables. We hesitated after hearing many
>warnings about reliability of recording (misfires, etc); but we recently
>purchased a computer from Gateway 2000 with a 3GB hard drive and an
>SCSI-interfaced CD-R already installed, complete with Corel CD-Creator
>software. After writing about 5 disks thus far (and several with
>multi-session format) it hasn't missed once. [However one of my colleages
>took his CD to another site and found that the CD-ROM in their system didn't
>have multisession capability and thus the "added" data (following the first
>write) was unreadable.]
>
>While CD-R technology has certainly improved since the early days (all of
>about a year or two ago), it's still not as simple as just copying to a Jazz
>or Zip. However, it's well worth it if compatibility and media cost are
>your concerns.
>
>And while DVD is on the horizon, I understand that the first drives will be
>read-only, as was the case with CD's. PC Magazine estimates a minimum of a
>year or two before the writable drives are available. If you have an
>inclination to do this, don't wait on DVD; CD is likely to be with us for
>some time yet.
>
>Neal
>--
>Neal Benson
>University of Florida
>E-mail: neal-benson@ufl.edu
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CD-ROM Vol 3 was produced by Monica M. Shively and other staff at the
Purdue University Cytometry Laboratories and distributed free of charge
as an educational service to the cytometry community.
If you have any comments please direct them to
Dr. J. Paul Robinson, Professor & Director,
PUCL, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907.
Phone: (765)-494-0757;
FAX(765) 494-0517;
Web